Applying Technology to Menu Planning!

This post is an update to my previous post about using standard work for menu planning.

About a year ago, I added technology.  I came across the website Plan to Eat -- a menu planning website that I love!

Since I was already doing menu planning manually, the move to this online version was very easy.  

Another key principle of Lean is to try things out manually first, then apply technology.

So this is how Plan to Eat works -- it is a subscription service, $39/year  and completely worth it in my opinion!  Plus you can try it for a month free, which I did and then signed up.

There are three sections to the website-- recipes, planning and list.  

Recipes

You can either import from the web or enter your recipes by hand.  For the later, I simply enter the recipe name, ingredient list, and then some tags/labels I've decided to use including meal (dinner) and main ingredient (beef).  They also have tags you can use -- I use "holiday" and "camping" so I can search just for those types of meals.

There is a bit of start up work to get any of your own recipes into the system, but if you only enter the ingredient list -- it's pretty quick.  You'll see why the ingredient list is so key in a moment.

Planner

There is a very user friendly planner tab that lists all your recipes on the left and a calendar on the right.  You simply drag and drop recipes into the calendar.  You can also add single ingredient side dishes like "broccoli" (which will be added to your shopping list) or include notes like "Leftovers" (which won't be added to your shopping list).

You can also set up saved searches.  So if you read my initial meal planning post, you'll remember that I have a paper index of all my meals organized by protein type for dinner.  Well on this website I created and saved a search to do the same thing -- basically show me all my meals sorted by main ingredient.

List

In my opinion this is the part that makes it worth the $39 a year.  While the recipes and the planning isn't too much different than what I was doing on paper; the part I hated most was compiling my shopping list once I made my meal plan.  This involved pulling out all the recipes to ensure all key ingredients had made it onto my list.

With Plan to Eat, you simply navigate to the List tab, enter your planned date range and it generates your list!  Amazing!  There is some cleanup required such as taking out six "salt" listings.  But this takes only a few minutes.  

Additionally, I created my own categories or "buckets" for different areas of the store -- such as "household" or "canned goods."  Then I can order these to match the general flow of the store.

When I'm shopping I take my phone, pull up my list, and mark things off as I buy them.  They don't have a specific app, so you just use the browser and mobile site -- it seems to work well enough. I really only use the list portion on my phone, and do all my planning on an actual computer.

Happy planning!

Heather

**I don't have any affiliation with or sponsorship from Plan to Eat. These are just my personal opinions.

Checklists, Checklists, Checklists! Menu Planning and Standard Work

So, I've decided that my 80% of my job as a mom revolves around food.  I am pretty much a health nut and we are currently avoiding wheat/gluten.  So, probably 90% of what my family eats is made from scratch---something I am very proud of!  Anyways...as a result I spend a lot of time menu planning, creating shopping lists, going shopping, putting food away, prepping food, cleaning up after meals, and yes, even cleaning up what comes out the other end as a result of food!  I am sure most of you can relate :)

So food planning and preparation is one place that I've applied a lot of lean thinking. One of my favorite lean tools is something we call standard work.  This is defined as the documented best way to achieve the right results.

What does that mean?  As we travel through life and running our households, we are constantly perfecting how we do things -- basically through the Plan-Do-Check-Adjust model.  So standard work simply means, write it down!

If you are familiar with Flylady her "Control Journal" where you keep your morning, afternoon, and evening routines are a perfect example of standard work.

The beauty of standard work is it takes the routine 80% of your tasks and makes them mindless, which frees up your brain to focus on the exceptional 20% of life.

Checklists and fillable forms are my personal favorite forms of standard work.  The idea is to take something that you do over and over again -- and write it down in a standard way, so that next time you can create the same results, with less work, thinking and planning.

I have standard work all over the place and rely on it heavily to keep our house running smoothly, yet allowing me to conserve thinking.

Menu Planning Steps including Standard Work

I know menu planning is a struggle for many, as it is for me, so I've tried to make it as easy as possible.  Here is how I used the tool of standard work to make it easier:

1.  I do two weeks of menu planning at a time using this "standard work" form.  I have it formatted so it prints two per page portrait style.  So what you are looking at is on a half-sized page.

2.  To be honest, I hate deciding on the menu plan -- and it does take me a good chunk of time -- probably 30-45 minutes (time on task--excluding interruptions) for a two week plan.  I usually look at my calendar so that if I have a late night I can plan something easier or out of the freezer. 

To make this step easier, about three months ago I created an index of all our dinners.  This has made a huge difference!  Now instead of pulling out various cookbooks or my notebook of printed recipes mostly from Allrecipes.com, I just look at this.  Here's a photocopy of mine which is handwritten and sorted by type of meat and slow cooker.

Also, about two years ago I implemented "No Cook Night," which is when we have leftovers or easily prepped food like hotdogs.  I typically plan NCN for Wednesday to give me a break in the middle of the week.  I also usually plan another day of leftovers on the weekend.  So I only actually plan 5 meals a week.

3.  I create a grocery list from that menu plan, and go "big" grocery shopping every other week with my 3-year old super shopper helper.

To make this easier, I have created a master shopping list in Excel. It is organized in the same way as the grocery store.  I print about 4-5 copies of these at a time and hang them on the refrigerator.  As I need things I just check them off.  I am on my second major version -- I needed a new one when I started shopping at a different store.

4.  I then transfer one week of meals on my visual board.  Don't be afraid of flexibility --we never have the meals on the board exactly in the way planned.  I will often flip two days, be too tired to cook one day -- so pull something from the freezer and bump the planned meal down.  The idea is that you know you have the food and option to prepare that meal.

Voila!  Menu and food planning made a little easier.

I use standard work to make all sorts of things easier:  daily tasks/routines, packing for travel, planning my day, etc.  I will talk about these in later posts.

Your Next Steps

So what can you do?  Here are some steps to get started:

1.  Make a list of all the meals you eat -- categorized however makes sense to you (main ingredient (beef, pork, chicken...), time to prepare, number of ingredients needed, etc.).

2.  Create or download the meal planning form.  Start with planning one week at a time -- a little less daunting.

3.  Or, how else might you be able to use standardized work to make routine tasks easier?

You can find both individual PDFs of these forms and the Excel Workbook here >>

Good luck!  

Visual Management -- Communicate with your team/family!

I’m back!  Going to try to get a little more momentum on this blog again.

For this post I am going to talk about visual management.  Visual management is a fundamental principle in lean thinking.  The idea behind it is to visually communicate key information to the team regarding what’s going on, who’s doing what, and status of projects.

I’ve found using a family visual board extremely helpful for both me and primarily our nanny to improve our communication and coordination.  My husband utilizes it a little bit.  I still occasionally hear, “Why didn’t I know about this???”  To which I respond, “It’s on the board.”

Here is a picture of our current family visual board, which is in the kitchen/eating area of our home – it includes the week’s dinners, schedule highlights, things coming up next week, and there is a section for the flylady zone – but right now that is more of a stretch goal than anything ;)

Here’s a picture:

Since our kids are little, the primary schedule coordination that occurs is my training schedule with our nanny – this is where the board really helps to prompt conversations about when I need to leave early or if we are working different days that usual.

So what’s nice about a family visual board is that it can help to get your family more or less on the same page for the upcoming week.  My ideal is then to “huddle” (10 minute stand up meeting) at the board every Sunday evening to quickly review what the week is going to look like and make sure everyone knows where they need to be.  My hubby isn’t quite on board for that yet…but maybe when the kids are into activities.

So, how can you get started?

1.  What information would be helpful to communicate? Car pool schedule, activities, who’s doing dinner….
2.  Where can you post it?  On a wall, in a laundry room, behind a door?
3.  How will you post it – dry erase board is the best, but a chalk board might be more aesthetically pleasing, even a large wall hanging calendar could act as a first step.
4. Give it a try! 

One of the key things I’ve found about visual boards is they take a lot of adjusting – so jump in, put something up and then keep tweaking it until you settle on something that works for you.

Along these lines, I suggest you keep your board pretty flexible until you settle on a final setup.  That means, don’t spend time affixing tape lines and laminating labels until you’re pretty sure that is what you want.  My board had all written labels and lines for at least six months.  Here you can see the stages of development:

         

             

Remember PLAN-DO-CHECK-ADJUST.

Some additional resources:

• I’ve noticed Target has quite a few attractive board options – so you can check there for supplies along with a Staples or Office Depot.
• Here is a link to a pretty good visual management blog: http://www.xqa.com.ar/visualmanagement/

Good luck!  Let me know how your experiments go and include photos if you can!

The Journey: Continuous Improvement

Laundry anyone?  Today's post (woefully late, I know) is about continuous improvement, which is one of, if not the fundamental principle of lean.  So, why the laundry pics to kick us off?  Well, if you read the previous post, it was primarily about applying the lean principle of one-piece-flow to laundry.  So of course many (at least those that don't know me too well) may assume that I actually do my laundry that way.....sorry to dissapoint!

The one-piece-flow method of laundry is the ideal, and I strive for it, but it is a process of continuous improvement.  The pictures show one load of clothes waiting to go into the washer (on the floor), one load that just came out of the dryer (in the basket), and one load upstairs of dirty clothes waiting to come down to be washed.  

But, this status is an improvement over our previous big batch processing!  We used to wash the majority of laundry on the weekends --say five loads, and as they came out of the dryer they would all get dumped on the spare room bed...resulting in a mountain of clean clothes.  Since they were out of sight and not in a pleasant place to spend 30 minutes folding, they generally would stay there until...well, until they were worn.  

So my first improvement was to dump and fold the clothes in the living room (while hanging out with DS or watching TV), put them back in basket and take upstairs.  No more clothes on the spare bed.  This does result in folded clothes sitting in the basket on the landing (there are two baskets there right now).  My next improvement was to be disciplined about not using the baskets until the folded clean clothes are put away --this prevents the waste of overproduction -- washing more clothes than I can handle/or am ready to fold and put away.  I am still working on this.  

Is it perfect?  No.  Perfection is not my goal....better is.  In my work world we talk about PLAN - DO - CHECK - ADJUST

When companies or organizations are trying to start their lean journey and implementing a lot of change, which is inherently stressful, we emphasize that continuous improvement means going through this cycle lots of times....forever in fact.

You already go through this cycle all the time, probably without knowing it.  Once you shift your conscious mindset to this way of thinking change tends to be less stressful -- because you know it won't be 100% the first time you try something new; you plan on having to make adjustments.  So now instead of fixing something in your household in one big swoop, think about one baby step you can take.  After you try it out, plan on "checking."  Ask those involved how it is going--maybe this is just you or maybe it is your kids, spouse, friend, whoever.  Once you get some feedback, make an appropriate adjustment and try it again!

So what is one thing you can try to make your household run a little more smoothly?  Remember continuous improvement is a journey....a way of travelling...not a destination!

Creating Flow in Your House

One of the primary goals of a lean system is to improve the flow of value.  By flow, we mean quite literally, flow ---things keep moving.  All of the wastes discussed in the previous post prevent flow in one way or another -- they hold up movement.  Let's look at an example.

It's nearly Christmas, so you start working on your Christmas letters.  How are you going to go about assembling the letters and mailing them?  Say you are sending 100.  Most people probably print 100 copies, stuff them all, address them all, stamp them all, and mail them all together.  Seems efficient, right?  I propose that while this way might be the most efficient method for each individual step, it is not efficient for the whole flow.  The "batch processing" described above creates a lot of waste.  Instead, the most efficient process for flow is to complete all the steps for one letter and mail it.  This is the lean way.  Let's think it through.

How long would it take for one letter to be assembled and mailed?  Print, fold, stuff, address, stamp and mail -- what do you think? 3 - 5 minutes?  How long will it be before your first letter is mailed in the above process?  Your first letter will go out as soon as all the letters are complete ... in effect, that first letter waits while you work through the entire batch.  So you get started on a Sunday night that you are feeling particularly ambitious, you print them, fold all, and stuff half of them.  Let say you spent 1.5 hours (print-10 minutes, 30 seconds per task -- 50 minutes for folding and 25 minutes for stuffing = about 1.5 hours).  Still, none mailed.

Then you get back to it on Tuesday evening, but you're dead tired, so you only work for 1 hour -- you finish stuffing (25 minutes) and have 17 addressed (assume 2 min per letter to address).  None mailed.

Wednesday you're determined to make serious progress -- you're family has been eating in the living room since Sunday because the  Christmas letters have taken over the dining room table!  So Wednesday you work for 3 1/2 hours -- 2 1/2 are spent finishing the addressing and the last hour is spent stamping.  Phew!  Finally, you are ready to drop your letters in the mail Thursday.

Now, let's look at how this might play out the lean way.

Sunday, you start--you know you only have 1 1/2 hours, and estimate 3.5 minutes per letter (30 seconds to fold, 30 seconds to stuff, 2 minutes to address, and 30 seconds to stamp and put in "to mail" pile).  In 90 minutes you estimate you can complete 25, so you print 25 copies.  Of course, it takes 7 minutes to print, so you effectively have 83 minutes left.  In that time you can complete 23 letters.  Those are done and mailed on Monday!  You feel great, because some are out the door.  Tuesday you get comments on Facebook from friends who can't believe how together you are to have your Christmas letters in the mail!  :) Plus, all you had to put away was your address list to pull back out later in the week.

Family eats at the table Monday and Tuesday.

Tuesday, you work for an hour -- assume 5 minutes for printing, you have 55 minutes, during which you should be able to complete 15 letters, so you print 15 more.  Finish them, and mail them.  38 letters sent so far.

Wednesday final pull -- you have 62 letters left, 3.5 minutes per letter + 10 minutes for printing = 3 hours 47 minutes.  You finish the letters and mail the final batch Thursday -- spending 17 minutes more time, but what have you gained?

1.  37 letters went out earlier than they would have in the "batch" system.
2.  You did not have excess "inventory" or your letters in process that you had to either keep moving or work around, i.e. eat in the living room.  Neither did you have to look at the mess with dread over the general task for 4 days.
3.  If there had been an error in the letter you would have wasted less paper by only printing what you planned to do that evening.
4.  You impressed your friends by getting the first set of letters out 4 days earlier!  For those of us who care about that sort of thing :o

So that is flow.  Here are some quick examples of flow or lack of it in the house.  One caveat -- many household tasks are always batched a bit due to modern conveniences -- washing machine, dishwasher, big supermarket...but we can still encourage flow by not further "batching" our batches.

1.  Dishes, how much better does the kitchen run when things flow -- dishes are washed or loaded into the dishwasher after every meal, or at least every evening and the dishwasher is promptly emptied?  V. collecting all the dirty dishes over the course of multiple days, then doing all of them at once?

2.  Laundry -- the one load a day method in which a load is washed, dried, folded, and put away every day, or every couple of days.  V. doing 5-6 loads on Saturday or Sunday and then piling them on the bed to be folded all at once?

3.  General house cleaning -- cleaning a little every day V. waiting and spending 6-8 hours cleaning once a week or once a month (depending on how much of a neat freak you are!).

The idea here is that time efficiency is not the only value, you want to start re-examining value to the whole family.  In working towards achieve flow in your household, you may spend a little more time to accomplish the same tasks, but you will gain value in other ways -- the peace of living in a tidy house, better health from having a functional kitchen with an empty sink and clear counters, and clothes when and where you need them.

How can you encourage flow in your household?  Pick one area where you currently batch and try doing smaller batches more regularly for a week...see how it goes.  Do you notice any unexpected benefits?

Good luck!  Heather

Customers, Value, and Waste -- Basic Lean Concepts Part I

The first principle of Lean is to provide value for the customer -- everything else is waste.  So, the question is, for your household, who is your customer?  For me, it is my family and friends.  What is the value I want to deliver?  Safety, health, peace, a nurturing and supportive environment, sustenance, quality time together, and fun!  These values are reflected in our newly developed family purpose statement, which is still in its draft form according to my husband.

Let's think for a moment about the "products" that our household might deliver:  meals, clean clothes, clean diapers (in my case), clean house, communication about schedules, transportation, health support (we're struggling with colds right now), emotional support, time and activities.  Surely there is more, and these probably vary some by household and values.  But hopefully you get the idea.

From a lean perspective, our goal is to deliver these products and the value they provide by doing only the most essential tasks -- everything else is "waste."  What does she mean by "waste," you are probably thinking.  Well, Toyota identified 7 wastes, us westerners added an 8th:

Defects  -- mistakes that cause us to have to redo things
Overproduction -- too much too soon ...hmm maybe the giant jug of mayonnaise for a great deal?
Waiting -- any waiting our customer does represents an opportunity for waste reduction
Non-utilized talent -- this is the 8th waste added by Americans, are we fully utilizing the capacity of others in our household?
Transportation -- moving stuff --up and down the stairs?
Inventory -- stuff, clutter--a whole industry has popped up around decluttering and having too much stuff!
Motion -- excess movement for providing value
Extra-processing -- doing more work or detail than is valued by you or your family.  Hmmm...maybe being a perfectionist when it comes to cleaning?

The idea behind lean is to determine what the value is you provide to your customer and maximize time doing value-adding activities, while eliminating or minimizing time spent on wasteful tasks listed above.

To apply this to your household:

1.  Think about one "product" you provide to your household.  Let's use grocery shopping as an example.

2.  Think about your current process that you use to do your family's shopping.  Do you do a meal plan?  Shopping list?  How do you know what others might want/need?  When do you go?  What happens when you arrive at the store?  What's your process for unloading and putting the groceries away?

3.  Consider some of the wastes that might be in your current or typically grocery shopping routine.  Do you ever forget to get something? (DEFECTS)  Do you have to do a lot of walking back and forth once you get to the store? (MOTION)  Do you buy in larger quantities than you need by shopping at Sam's or Cosco? (INVENTORY)  Do you buy items that it turns out you already had but didn't know it?  (INVENTORY)

4.  Now think about at least one thing you could do to eliminate or minimize one waste.  Maybe make a list if you don't currently.  Organize your list by aisle/area of store.

5.  Try it out!

So, where can you see waste in your household?  Next time, we'll talk about FLOW....(and I don't mean our Aunt ;) )

Welcome to the Lean Home Blog!

Hi Everyone!


So, here's my story.  I work as a trainer in lean healthcare, lean office, and leadership skills at Northwestern Michigan College, in the beautiful Traverse City, Michigan.  I love my job.  My office works directly with companies to provide lean training both off site and in the workplace, I don't train any "college students."  That was a previous life.


I moved to northern Michigan six years ago when I married, my hubby, DH (Dear Hubby, right?).  I now have two boys -- 5 1/2 and 3 1/2 (which is why there are no posts for a year or two!). We are having a ball!  

I have started applying the concepts I train to improve work processes to our home.  For a long time I've thought of writing a book on how to apply lean concepts to the household, and then I figured -- why batch it?  Why not do small pieces in a blog!?  This comment will make more sense when you learn more about lean!  For now, BATCHING = BAD!  


So here we are.  I cannot wait to share some things we've implemented around our house to make things run a little more smoothly and even more than that I cannot wait to hear about what YOU have done to make your family and household more successful.


Welcome to the journey.....


Heather