Increasing efficiency & creative team daily output
Affected Users:
Cake Decorators
The daily tasks of the cake decorators were inefficient and disorganized. Necessary daily processes were broken up and repeated over and over, constantly stopping and starting different smaller tasks. Decorators would: assemble a cake, decorate it, write out labels, assemble the container, package the cake, put it away, then start that same process over again. Writing out labels for each cake with the flavor and size on a one-size-fits-all branded sticker was time consuming and often sloppy/unattractive. There was untapped potential for much more product output within a shift; to work smarter not harder.
Exploration:
My team and I experimented with different variations of an assembly line approach for each of the processes in producing the cakes each day. We looked at the layout of our workspace; was it conducive to our needs? I also did a labor cost analysis of time spent writing out cake labels, and compared it against the cost of designing and ordering specifically printed labels for each cake variety.
Implementation:
The sequence of required daily cake tasks was re-structured to streamline them into sequential blocks of individual processes. We also changed the setup of the production area so that resources for each task were organized and accessible, and workspaces were larger & less obstructed. I designed and ordered custom product label stickers for each standard cake variety offered.
Results:
These changes allowed each work day to flow seamlessly from task to task in a way that increased the daily product output of each employee by 250%. After organizing the tasks together in this new and cohesive way, an additional benefit we saw was that it kept the custom orders much more organized and minimized the occurrence of mistakes.