Process Playground

Chicken Preparation

Chicken Preparation. The process of seasoning chicken in a large-scale restaurant operation. This process shows how process modeling demonstrates motion waste and how improvements affect the time through the process.

Process Playground model for preparing chicken. There are 8 activity blocks across the top that are part of the process, while 8 across the bottom are highlighting motion activities.

0. There is one item in this process: Run. This item just indicates a run through the process. It is not a "physical item" moving through the process; it gathers time to report out at the end.

1. Add the Run item to the Queue and set Initial on Hand to 1. This will run through the process once, allowing you to observe the Total Lead Time (TLT) at the end.

2. This is a text box that labels this row of Motion Activities. Process Playground allows you to add annotations, change the color and thickness of borders, and make other modifications to highlight parts of your process. In this case, all of the Motion Activities were moved into the bottom swimlane and highlighted to identify areas of improvement.

3. Add the average and time variation for each step. Using real-life data will bring this process to life, but separating the steps in this way allows you to experiment with improvements to this process. Can you eliminate steps or reduce time in each of these Motion Activities? How does it affect the TLT?

4. Only one person completes all of the tasks. By adding a Resource Block attached to all of the Activities, we can imagine one person completing all of the steps in this process. However, calling out the single resource might inspire some discussion on the costs and benefits of adding a second person to this process.

5. Turn the Total Lead Time (TLT) result "on" for the Exit Block. When you look at the Results, you can add the result to the bottom of the shape to display it permanently.

This model allows you to experiment with improvements to Motion waste. By explicitly implementing each step of a process, you can adjust very small steps to see how it affects the outcome. As a challenge, how might you model adding a second person whose job is to season but not touch the chicken?

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