Article contributed by Mike Berman, COO, Day & Nite/All Service
During one of my occasional visits to LinkedIn, I saw that after several decades in healthcare a high school friend had joined the rather trendy professional organizer field by opening her own practice.
Decluttering has become a hot topic, although its greatest emphasis seems to be limited to our personal lives and habits. Lazzaro Garrio and Peter S. Goodman’s superb NY Times How The Supply Chain Crisis Unfolded is both must reading and inspiration for foodservice’s adopting declutter philosophies for business.
Despite evidence showing the best soft skills practitioners consistently generate the best tangible results, too many not only separate soft and hard skills a high percentage dismiss soft as far less relevant, focusing instead on the more technical hard skills. I suppose this would mean even the notion of decluttering in the workplace can be easily rejected. Not so fast! Consider the Federal Reserve Board’s major announcements from last week, with reasonable certainty interest rates will go up 3 times in 2022 and we might see as many as 8 rate hikes over the next couple of years.
While The Fed’s policies are intended to curb inflation, higher interest rates will certainly, unfavorably alter the capital intensive hospitality sector’s economics. If the standard measure has been it takes 8 months of capital to fund a new foodservice venture, compromised supply chains coupled with higher cost of capital probably doubles that equation. By this measure alone, declutterization is anything but soft.
Let’s illustrate through a simple process mapping exercise. Isolate one piece of foodservice equipment you purchased, then chart out how many vendors were involved, how many individual hands it touched from the time you placed an order, arranged financing, had it installed, took warranty service, established a recurring service relationship—plus all other activities beyond these most basic for a single piece of equipment. Then multiply this single item out across your entire infrastructure portfolio. Pretty soon your simple process map will be so extensively cluttered that even Rand McNally wouldn’t have mapping technology to make sense of it all.
Foodservice equipment, the industry’s historically elongated, unnecessarily complex supply to total asset management chain is prime for business decluttering; operational, organizational and financial implications as profound as simplifying is a pillar for peace of mind allowing you to put your time and attention to other business issues current and mid-term circumstances dictate. No less than legendary philosopher and business titan Frank Zappa is credited with necessity is the mother of innovation. With hospitality’s burning flame of uncertainty intensifying on a daily basis, necessity is spiking at unprecedented rates. Could there ever be a more critical time for industry innovation on one of the most cluttered segments of foodservice operations?
Although the Day & Nite family of companies may not offer Zappaesque don’t eat the yellow snow brilliance, when it comes to decluttering all asset management aspects even Frank himself would defer. To get started on your urgent path to comprehensive equipment portfolio efficiency email jbf@wearetheone.com.