A FootLong Mass Customization Experience

You enter a seemingly healthy multi national food joint which boasts of customizing the nutritious meals or breakfasts, You choose your own breads, sausages, ingredients, garnish etc. to make a perfect sandwich for yourself and pay an amount which you feel is worth paying at for the taste you wanted.

This is exactly what is experienced at SUBWAY.

However as an OPSolute Blogger, I tried to see the operations part behind this experience.

The experience can be termed as a - Perfect Mass Customization in the food industry.

Let us understand this process in detail.

Eg.1)You go to the McDonald's and pick up your favorite burger.

This burger is already prepared, made hot and served to you. These Burgers are prepared on the ASSEMBLY LINE or in-fact this is Mass Production which goes into the preparation.

(Veg Assembly Line and Non Veg Assembly line being a separate assembly line)

Eg.2)You go to the finest authentic MAHARASHTRIAN food corner in the city. You order a Kolhapuri dish an

d it is prepared exclusively for you according to your taste likings and spices choice. This is termed as Mass Personalization. Every time you have been delivered an exclusive product, according to your choice and there are plenty of options through which one can choose.

Eg.3) You Enter Subway.

Step 1 - Select Breads(out of 4)

Step 2 - Select Size (out of 2)

Step 3 - Select stuffing (out of 8)

Step 4 - Select sauce (out of 6)

Step 5 -Select the way it is served (Grilled or Plain)

In this case one can choose from a few sub-items and prepare a wide range of items according to the choice of the customer.

This is the Mass Customization Principle which goes for a food industry.

I shall explain this in detail.

What is Mass Customization:-

Subway produces high volumes of subs or meals. However it has few raw materials towards making the end products. The variety of these end items is high.

It is the creation of high volume product with large variety so that a customer may specify model of his exact requirements of a large volume of possible end items arising from a few raw materials.

Why Mass Customization:-

Customers have a varying food taste. It is highly impossible to serve them satisfactory and profitability without mass customization.

Mass personalization is very costly and time consuming and would have constraint on the output volumes.(eg. you go and stitch a shirt for you)

Mass Production would not target the varying consumer tastes and would refrain a food place like SUBWAY being a market differentiator.

Also a customized experience would ask for a premium pricing profitable for a firm.

What is needed for Mass Customization:-

One needs to have following three things to implement Mass Customization-

1.Product Modulation

2.Process Modulation

3.Supply Chain Integration

1. Product Modulation-

The subs, meals, or footlong sandwiches in the SUBWAY menu can be product modulated. Each of these end items have distinct ingredients which are

A product modulation means that a product can be broken down into its system ingredient parts. These are separable and form basic building blocks towards the finished product.These parts can be subassemblies, subparts or an ingredient part. The constituent parts have distinct characteristics, features and different components characterized different end products or features of the end products.

By product modulating the subway systems, once can produce number of different products.

Statistically speaking, by multiplicative theorem Subway can have 4*2*8*6*2= 576 unique subs.(Breads(out of 4), Select Size (out of 2),Select stuffing (out of 8), Select sauce (out of 6), Select the way it is served (Grilled or Plain - out of 2)

(However many of them are functionally identical or are redundant or in simple terms, NOT TASTY NOT FEASIBLE kind of..)

2.Process Modulation

All Subway menus are process modulated. Making a sandwich/sub being a simple process, modulation is easy and directly implemented.

A process modulation means that the process is so flexible and changeable that all processes can be inter-changeable and can be done without a lot of human resource.

3.Supply Chain Integration

Supply chain for subway typically will consist only of Procurement, Production and Self delivery. As there are few raw material towards the finished product, the procurement process is standardized and can be managed easily without managerial interference.

Supply chain integration consists of collaborative procurement taking into consideration the daily consumption.

So this is what the FootLong Mass Customization Experience is all about.

So when you go next time, for a sub, just think about the FOOTLONG Mass Customization behind the sub..!!

MRTS CHENNAI - PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE

I came across an article on Mass Rapid Transport system (MRTS) in Chennai region.
The article is focussed at the shortcomings of the MRTS system especially in the following matters - Project Planning, Project Management, Operations, Integration with the other transport systems & Political Issues.

The article focuses on the journey of the planning stages to the current condition.The current condition is that, though MRTS saves time during the peak hours, the load factor is hardly 10% due to the quality of the service and the public security concerns. The flaws that I could target are as following:-

1. The planning stage -
To minimize the costs and considering the city planning issues, the routing of the MRTS was done along the river line of th city.
This did not consider the proximity issues related with the population nuclei of the city.
The train stations designed are not proper and these are at different locations than the highest population densities.

2. Project Management -
The project is 50-50 project between the Indian railways and the Govt. Of tamilnadu. The project started in 1985 and took almost 16 years to complete the Rs.11.2 Crores project.
For any city development project, this timeline is huge.
One might not forecast the city growth and the civil transport need estimation over this long period of time.

3. Operations –
The transport operations are based on – Load factor, quality of the service, security in the service.
The load factor being very less, (less than 10%), the frequency of the shuttle trains running is very low. Which in turns pulls lower customers and the vicious circle continues.
The quality of the service has two major factors – during the journey and other than journey.
Inadequate staffing is a major concern for this. Also the condition of the shuttle trains is poor pertaining to the losses its occurring and the load factor.
Security in the MRTS is challengeable as there had been many cases of theft and female abuse and harassments.

4. Integration with other systems-
Integration with other transport systems are very important especially – bus routings, auto rickshaws and private vehicles.
The train stations should be well supported by the other public systems. Initially separate buses were scheduled for the train stations but the service was discontinued.
Also the parking provided for private vehicles were not secure enough. This added to the decline in parking users.

5. Political Issues –
Did not understand much about this.

THE MAIN AIM OF THIS BLOG IS - CAN YOU SUGGEST SOLUTIONS FOR THIS??

Following are some solutions –
1. Go for Public-private partnership model and make it profitable.
2. Selling of train station properties to the merchandise
3. Integration with other transport systems.
4. Running of train shuttles with lower number of CONTAINERS... (DABBAs)
5. Add new routings to the existing ones....
6. Sell to Indian rail completely; let them do what they can do about this... (hehe)

Things to consider :-
1. Trade off between planning horizon and effectiveness
2. REMEDIES AT THIS POINT OF TIME... – immediate solution
3. PROFIT MAKING is not THE ONLY MOTIVE – Public Service remains the MAIN AIM...

EXTRAPOLATIONS:-
1. PUNE – SKY BUS model...

SUCCESS STORIES:-

1. DELHI METRO...