Why is it not profitable to clean the store with a vacuum cleaner?
Family restaurant Saizeriya, where you can drink wine for just 100 yen, is doing great. New stores have been opened one after another, mainly in the Tokyo metropolitan area, and now the number of stores has exceeded 800. The consolidated final profit and loss for the fiscal year ending August 2010 is expected to reach a profit of 7.4 billion yen, marking a record high for the first time in eight years.
While the entire family restaurant industry is in a slump, Saizeriya continues to win. The reason for this is the cost competitiveness that she thoroughly pursued to improve productivity.
The company's engineering department, which was established in October 2009, holds the key. This department, which was set up by current president Kazunari Horino, is working to improve all aspects of operations at all chain stores.
"When a chain store aims to improve its work, it is the hardware system that should be focused on. Expecting software (human resources) proficiency, there is a limit to covering it with effort and guts. If we can change the way we think from the beginning, we might be able to achieve an improvement of 50% or 80%,” says Satoshi Kubo, Manager of the Engineering Department.
Most of Saizeriya's employees, who are asked to think logically in the entrance exam, major in science. With the power of ideas backed by science, common sense tasks such as cleaning the store and washing dishes are reconsidered as a matter of course. This is to create a better system by going back to the principles and rethinking why the work is necessary and what the purpose is.
A symbolic example of this is cleaning the floor before opening. When we converted the average cleaning time for each store into data, we found that the time spent vacuuming was the most wasteful and inconsistent. Therefore, the vacuum cleaner was abandoned and a state-of-the-art mop that matched the width of the passage was introduced.
"First, I thought about the definition of cleaning. Cleaning in Saizeriya is to finally eliminate the garbage that has fallen on the floor. There is no reason to suck it up with a vacuum cleaner from the beginning."
Next page 12 ▼NO.1 Click here for business magazine President. You can buy it at bookstores and convenience stores! Up to 27,660 yen off! Click here for a great subscription. Related articleWhy are there many "famous stores" in hard-to-find backstreets? Cleaning habits: "10 seconds every day" breaks the losing cycle Ranking #Cost performance #Eating out and distribution