Reducing Kitchen Overtime Payments

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Reducing Kitchen Overtime Payments Project
82462 Sheraton Grand Hotel Spa Project Leader
Jill Easton Project Sponsor Sacha Cauwels,
Food Beverage Director Black Belt Peter
Cullen Master Black Belt Paul James
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Project Justification Problem /
Opportunity During 2001 our kitchen paid out just
over 109,000 in overtime payments. So far in
2002, our kitchen payroll is already 39,000 over
budget as we head towards the busy Xmas and New
Year period. We have 2 more full time members of
kitchen staff than we have budgeted and we only
have marginal equivalent increases in FB
revenues. 2003 budget is written with the same
headcount (no. of staff) as 2002 and there is
no plan to alter the structure or operational
style of the kitchen. If the pattern of the last
few years is not changes, the likelihood of
kitchen payroll being considerably over-budget
again next year is very high.
Overtime Payments Structure- Overtime Payments
(1.5 x) are paid on any hours worked beyond 40
hours a week Double Time Payments (2.0 x ) are
paid if the person is asked to work on the 6th or
7th day of their week Context- The hotel has 2
restaurants (outlets)The Terrace (120 seater
buffet) and The Grill Room (45 seat 3 Rosette
fine dining) and a large Banqueting operation
able to do sit down meal x 450 All meals are
prepared in a central kitchen traditionally split
into 4 corners
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SIPOC SIPOC chart is used to visualise the
overall process and all the different elements
that need to align in-order for it to happen The
second main use of the SIPOC chart was to
generate searching questions that we can use to
explore certain theories
Do kitchen rotas coincide with restaurant opening
hours?
What is the range and complexity of the menus and
dishes that are on offer? How long does each one
take to prepare?
What are the most popular dishes in each outlet?
How complicated are the most popular dishes and
how long do they take to make?
Which section of the kitchen generates the most
overtime?
How are the kitchen rotas put together? What are
the effects of holidays, sickness etc?
What role do stores play in delivering produce
to the kitchen?
How much prep is involved? How far ahead does it
get done?
How do the chefs know what to do? Do they have to
run around and find someone to ask?
Is there enough equipment available at the right
time? Do chefs have to wait while equipment is
washed cleaned, for example?
For big functions, how much can be cooked at once?
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Voice of the Customer
Comment Issue Requirement
The outlets have out-grown the kitchen. Were expected to do more and more with fewer and fewer chefs Menus (esp. Banqueting Bar) are far more extensive and complicated than they used to be. Meanwhile, kitchen headcount has reduced from 31 to 27 Budgeted staffing levels should reflect the business levels and workload required to provide the service that the hotel demands
Everything goes through the sauce corner There are obvious bottle-necks in the way the kitchen operates. Bottlenecks cause inefficiency and waste time Review operating procedures processes
Lots of jobs in the larder can be really long and boring. Being on the veg. section can mean peeling carrots for 3 months Preparing all food from scratch leads to boring, monotonous jobs with very little variety. Jobs should be varied and interesting to prevent excessive staff turnover and dissatisfaction. Purchasing pre-prepared items could eliminate much of this unnecessary, demoralising work
Banqueting menus are mostly old Grill Room menus Menus that are now made en-mass for functions are based on intricate and complicated dishes that were originally served in our 3 AA Rosette Fine Dining restaurant Menu engineering should encompass all aspects of preparing the dish. Labour demands, complexity, kitchen capacity etc should be taken into account as well as Cost Of Sales etc
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Voice of the Customer
Comment Issue Requirement
The split-shift for The Grill is 10-3 then 7-11. The Grill opens at 7 so to get all your prep done, you need to be here about 1½ hours before then! Kitchen rota is not written according to the work that is actually required to be done Kitchen rota should reflect both service times and preparation time needed
Doing a steak dinner for 300 people is a nightmare. We can only do 10 steaks on the grill at once Some menus are not necessarily easy to prepare and cook which gives rise to labour-intensive production methods Menu engineering should take into account the cooking methods labour implications a well as more traditional aspects such as Cost Of Sales
Nothing comes is ready-done. Everything has to be prepped All food is prepared from scratch which can be laborious, tedious and boring for chefs and takes up a lot of time Smarter purchasing might be able to alleviate some of the more arduous tasks in the kitchen without any detrimental effect on the customers experience.
Staffing is so tight that whenever anyone goes on holiday, someone else had to do overtime Staffing levels in the kitchen may not be appropriate for the necessary workload. Staffing levels in the kitchen should reflect the business levels and operating style.
Voice of the Customer comments gave us further
ideas and clues about some of the factors that
might be causing the overtime problem
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Which section of the kitchen generates the most
overtime?
To answer this question we had to collect data
from the HR Payroll system that
contained- Hours actually worked per chef Hours
at Overtime Rate (1.5x) per chef Hours worked at
Double Time per chef We then manually went
through 6 months worth of kitchen rotas, noting
who was working in which section between which
dates. These two sets of information were then
matched together to determine which section of
the kitchen people were working in during the
periods when they were generating the most
overtime payments The feeling among the chefs was
that the Larder section would generate the most
overtime as this was this was the section with
the most diverse demands.
While this turned out to be true, it had to be
considered that there are up to 6 chefs in the
larder section at any one time whereas other
sections maybe only have 1 or 2. Therefore, it
stood to reason that the larder would generate
the most. But was this the full story? To dig a
little deeper, we decided to have a look at the
same figures again but, this time, average them
across the number of people in that particular
section
this time the answer was very different!
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Which section of the kitchen generates the most
overtime?
At some point in the past, the night chefs had
agreed a shift pattern of 7 nights on, 7 nights
off, working 12 hour shifts. Over the course of
the 4 week pay period, this means they would
normally work 168 hours and should receive- 160
hours _at_ time 20 Night Premium 8 hours _at_ Time
Half As previously mentioned, the night chefs
worked a 7-day week. A horrible possibility began
to appearwhich Payrolls timesheets confirmed as
being true. In actual fact, the night chefs were
claiming Double Time on the 6th and 7th day of
each week that they were working. This meant that
they were receiving- 160 hours _at_ time 20 Night
Premium 48 hours _at_ Double Time
The night chefs were generating over twice as
much overtime each as anyone else in the
kitchen. As the 2 night chefs have traditionally
done such regular shifts, this seemed very
strange. We began to look at what could be
causing this! The answer lay in their shift
patterns
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Which section of the kitchen generates the most
overtime?
Overall, the generation of overtime across the 3
main kitchen sections was quite even. We began
to look at some of the processes involved in
these areas to see if any of the processes could
be improved and any time could be saved. We moved
on to our next question
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What are the most popular dishes in each outlet?
How complicated are the most popular dishes and
how long do they take to make?
The most popular dishes (across all the outlets)
were- French Fries Club Sandwiches Chicken
Sandwiches Ham Apple Chutney Sandwiches Smoked
Salmon Sandwiches The Grand Burger Soup of the
Day Cream Teas Egg Mayonnaise
Sandwiches Collectively, these 9 dishes account
for 80 of all the dishes that the kitchen
produces What follows is a series of flow charts
mapping some of the processes involved in
preparing some of these seemingly-straight-forward
dishes!
Data on the most popular menu items was gathered
from the Micros POS system and analysed to give a
Pareto chart of the most commonly prepared
dishes. Any improvements we could make to the
processes involved in these dishes would have the
greatest impact.
80 of all Outlet Food Orders
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Egg Mayonnaise Sandwich Filling
Ham Apple Chutney Sandwich Filling
Handmade Crisps (served with all Sandwiches)
2 hours
3 hours
5 hours - not including overnight soak or
possible delay for Brat-Pan
3 hours not including possible delay for
availability of range
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What are the most popular dishes in each outlet?
How complicated are the most popular dishes and
how long do they take to make?
The previous process maps highlight that a great
deal of chefs hours are spent preparing items
that are- Very easily and cheaply bought-in
ready-made The cheapest retail food items
available in the hotel Add little, if any value
to the customers experience (eg. Would you
really care if the ham in your sandwich was
sliced by hand or by a machine?!)
A further soul-destroying process that the
larder performs (although not mentioned
previously) is the hand-picking of salad leaves
for salads and garnish. Picking leaves is
regarded as an on-going joke among the chefs who,
on a busy day, can spend up to 6 hours washing,
rinsing and picking the leaves. The
reasonquality and cleanliness. A different Six
Sigma project (concerned with complaints,
discounts, deductions and rebates) had discovered
4 separate occasions in 3 months that food had
been sent back because of foreign objects being
found in the salad leaves. Proof-enough that this
time-consuming process (done in the name of
quality) was far from effective.
The large volumes that these items are prepared
in means that a small improvement in the process
of each would make big impact to the overall
workload of the kitchen It was also suggested
that the soul destroying nature of some of
these processes might be a contributing factor to
the staff turnover that exists in the kitchen.
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Banqueting menus are mostly old Grill Room menus
What is the range and complexity of the menus and
how long does each one take to prepare?
If dishes that were designed for a 3 Rosette fine
dining room are being mass produced in large
volumes as part of our Banqueting offering, it is
reasonable to assume that these particular dishes
might be quite complicated, labour-intensive and
time-consuming to prepare. To verify any link
between this and the overtime situation, we again
went back to our payroll data. By dividing the
number of covers into the payroll data we were
able to calculate an Hours per Cover
productivity measure. A correlation of this
metric against the kitchens payroll gives a
correlation co-efficient of 0.815considerably
greater than the 0.65 threshold
A fitted-line regression plot of this data
clearly shows that as the hrs per cover
increases, so does the payroll. It is a positive
correlation. This suggests that if the dishes
were made simpler then the time required to
produce each cover would decrease accordingly and
the kitchen payroll would come down
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How are the kitchens rotas put together? What
are the effects of holidays, sickness etc?
If the chefs comments were true then you would
expect to see a positive correlation (gt0.65)
between Holiday Hours and Overtime Hours
Staffing is so tight that whenever anyone goes on holiday, someone else has to do overtime
It can clearly be seen that there is no such
result either for Time Half or Double Time
hours Therefore, if the kitchens rotas continue
to be structured in the same way, this argument
can be disregarded as a reason for overtime. In
turn, this suggests that any recruitment of extra
chefs (to help cover during holiday periods)
would potentially make no difference to the
amount of overtime generated. The solution is
not to throw people at it
Voice of the Customer comments from the Sous Chef
suggest that the current staffing levels are
already stretched, working to full capacity and
overtime is generated when chefs are either away
on sick leave or vacation (owing to covering
shifts) To verify this argument, we went back to
our payroll data to see if there were any
correlations between no. of holiday, sick, or
other un-worked hours and the volume of overtime
generated We used Minitab statistics software to
generate a correlation study of the data For a
relationship to be established between two sets
of data, the correlation result needs to be
greater than 0.65 or less than -0.65
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How are the kitchens rotas put together? What
are the effects of holidays, sickness etc?
The outlets have out-grown the kitchen. Were
expected to do more and more with fewer and fewer
chefs
Further clues to the construction of the kitchen
rotas came from a more in-depth correlation
analysis which measured the productivity of the
kitchen against the number of covers served in
each outlet. It was interesting to note initially
that the Total Hours worked in the kitchen (all
salaried hours plus all overtime hours) bore no
relationship to the Total Covers. This suggests
strongly that the rotas are not necessarily
constructed relative to the business levels in
the hotel.
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How are the kitchens rotas put together? What
are the effects of holidays, sickness etc?
The presence of a correlation between Total
Covers and Overtime Hours but not between Total
Hours Worked possibly indicates further that the
rotas are not being constructed around the
business A couple of scenarios that would result
in these figures could be- The kitchen are
already working at their maximum capacity. Any
additional business cannot be absorbed into the
existing work hours. So, as soon as covers go up,
the kitchen jumps straight into an overtime
situation. However, if the rotas were proactively
being constructed around the needs of the
business, you would expect people to be brought
in for whole extra shifts, in which case it would
either show in the Hrs _at_ Time column or the
Double Time column. Neither is seen The rotas are
constructed irrespective of the business levels
within the hotel. So, if any additional volume
comes in, it can only be serviced by doing
additional hours on top of the existing
roster.
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Do kitchen rotas coincide with restaurant opening
hours?
A 10 Split shift is 10am 2pm then 6pm 10pm.
This means that Lunch Service either finishes at
exactly the same time as the shift or, in most
cases, later. Given that chefs have to clean
down their areas at the end of service, how can
this get done if the chefs have already gone
off-shift half an hour earlier?unless they are
staying behind and generating overtime The same
situation exists at the end of Dinner
Service Similarly, it is unrealistic that a chef
will walk to his station and everything will be
fully prepared and ready for service at exactly 6
oclock - just as service starts Again, the
reality of the job means that they will be
required to come in early to ensure Mise en Place
is complete before service actually startsand
accrue more overtime
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Our Recommendations were

1. Re-engineer the Night Chefs shift pattern so
   they avoid working 7 days in one session.
2. Re-negotiate the structure of Night Chefs pay to
   be wholly covered by a fixed salary
3. Trial various bought-in, pre-prepared products to
   eliminate labour-intensive preparation of
   high-volume, low-return dishes
4. Re-engineer Banqueting Menu to be more simple and
   less labour-intensive
5. Assess the possibility of dividing the kitchen to
   give the Bar and Room Service a bespoke area with
   all necessary equipment for their relevant menus
6. Use productivity measures in new time-sheet
   system to ensure that rosters are written
   relative to the volume and needs of the business
7. Re-align shift patterns to more accurately and
   effectively meet the needs of the business and
   the opening times of the outlets, allowing for
   preparation pre / post service requirements

At the time of writing, the kitchen have already
begun to trial various pre-prepared, bought-in
food options and the trials are going well. Food
Beverage Control have agreed that deliveries
and decanting of meat will be performed by them,
removing 4 out of 8 steps from the delivery
process and potentially freeing-up an extra hour
per day ( equates to over 360 hours per year or
just over two working months!) of the Sous Chefs
time! Owing to the imminent departure and
replacement of our Executive Chef, the more
organisational and time-management aspects of the
kitchen are being put on hold until the new
Executive Chef arrives and can be briefed about
this projects findings
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Improvements implemented

1. Night chefs shift pattern changed from (7 on / 7
   off) to (4 on / 4 off) with hours aggregated over
   the month
2. Various pre-prepared products are now being
   bought in. For example, mayonnaise, egg
   mayonnaise, pre-sliced ham, chutney etc. Products
   were blind tested on members of the kitchen staff
   and were positively received. VOC from kitchen
   staff regarding removal of mind-numbing jobs
   has been extremely positive
3. Banqueting buffet menus are being totally
   re-designed as part of DMAIC project 23405 and
   the labour intensity piece that overlaps
   between these 2 projects will form a major part
   of those new menus
4. Further inspection of the rotas suggested that
   the problems encountered there were mainly
   centred on manning the Grill Room. In conjunction
   with a review of the business levels in the Grill
   Room we have taken a decision to keep this outlet
   closed on a Monday, thereby reducing it to a 5
   day operation with subsequent effect on overtime