Hoyleton Youth & Family Services Reduces Inventory Management Time By 77% With Kure
PROJECT SUMMARY
Business Case
Outside of cooking, Youth Care cooks are also responsible for serving as a mentors, teaching and exemplifying healthy life skills, social skills, and coping mechanisms. The safety and well-being of residents, both physically and emotionally, will always top priority and when Youth Care cooks are ordering and distributing the food, they cannot provide support to other Youth Care workers and children in the home. Food is also often wasted, and pantries are packed with excess food inventory.
Root Cause Analysis
There is no one else who can complete the ordering and receiving process.
Youth Care cooks are the only workers who know how to do the process.
Solutions Implemented
Hiring an inventory specialist to manage the ordering and receiving of inventory.
Training the Inventory specialist and the Youth Care cooks in 5s and FIFO.
Apply 5s to organize the kitchen with the Inventory Specialist and the Youth Care Cooks.
Create a tracking board, use physical cards to indicate need for inventory, and create a Teams channel for the Inventory Specialists and Youth Care cooks to communicate.
Train the Youth Care cooks and Inventory Specialist how to use the inventory tracking board.
Adding visual cues and reminders in all spaces inventory-related.
Bring in maintenance staff to drive the onsite gator for inventory dispersal.
Create SOPs with the Inventory Specialist, Youth Care cooks, and the maintenance staff to follow after implementation.
Project Results
Youth Care cooks went from spending an average of 9.7 hours a week on inventory-related process to spending an average of 2.25 hours per week on inventory-related process.
Introduction
Hoyleton Youth & Family Services is a nonprofit organization that offers mental and behavioral health services including counseling, crisis intervention, foster care & placement services, therapeutic residential care, and Hispanic community support. Youth in residential care at Hoyleton stay in cottages with a family-like environment where they can learn, grow, and develop skills that they will carry for the rest of their lives. The team at the cottages includes Youth Care cooks and Youth Care staff. Youth Care cooks provide meals, manage inventory, and provide care to the youth, while Youth Care staff focus only on care.
Youth Care cooks serve as mentors to residential care youth, teaching and exemplifying healthy life skills, social skills, and coping mechanisms. Cooking healthy home-cooked meals and teaching youth transferable skills is what Youth Care cooks are passionate about and is most valuable for their time.
The Problem
When Youth Care cooks are managing inventory, they are unable to offer support to the children at the residential home. At Hoyleton, each Youth Care cook was managing inventory with separate budgets preventing Youth Care cooks from sharing food. With each cook managing separate budgets and dealing with bulk supplies, inventory tasks were time-consuming and stressful, resulting in disorganized kitchens and delays in meal preparation.
(Figure 1) displays the excess inventory in the kitchen cabinets looked like upon arrival.
The Process Walk revealed the amount of time it took them to order food and receive deliveries on top of their regular job duties. The Youth Care cooks opened up about feeling overwhelmed by the amount of inventory and their lack of time to maintain an organized working space.
(Figure 2) displays the process of managing inventory and where some of the problems occurred.
(Figure 3) displays that Youth Care cooks were averaging 9.7 hours per week completing these tasks and there is a non-random pattern due to the cadence of the delivery schedule for the vendors.
The Root Causes
No other staff could handle ordering and receiving.
Only Youth Care cooks knew the process.
Separate cottage budgets and bulk-only vendors complicated inventory management.
The Solutions
Hired an inventory specialist.
Trained in 5S and first-in-first-out (FIFO) techniques.
Organized kitchens with the 5S method.
Created a tracking board and teams channel for communication.
Added visual aids for inventory levels and first-in-first-out (FIFO) of items
Involved maintenance staff in inventory tasks.
Developed SOPs for inventory management.
The Results
(Figure 4)
Youth Care cooks now spend only 2.25 hours per week on inventory, thanks to the new system. This 77% time reduction allows them to focus more on supporting and mentoring the youth. Also, three 55-gallon trash cans of expired food items were removed from the inventory.
(Figure 5) displays the after-photos when 5S and FIFO are in the cabinets and pantries.
Conclusion
By implementing GLSS Training & Certification with innovative instructional design and content, Hoyleton Youth & Family Services achieved a significant improvement in inventory management. This approach not only saved time but also fostered a sense of involvement and ownership among the Youth Care cooks, highlighting the importance of continuous improvement.
This Lean Six Sigma Case Study was completed in collaboration with Illuminative Strategies, Inc., a management consulting firm offering business process optimization, project management, and more to clients throughout the United States & Canada.
