The Lean Bakery

Description

The Lean Bakery is a quick, entertaining story about a baker in Barcelona who saved his business with lean thinking and successfully expanded it through rapid experimentation and problem solving.

Café 365 supplies over 100 cafés (shops) daily with freshly baked bread and products, from a small 7,000 sq. ft. factory. The authors/owners believe that running experiments to remove waste is the best way to get closer to your customers. The book includes an example of their approach to lean problem solving—complete with worksheets—and an invitation to run your own experiments.

In 2005, Juan Antonio Tena faced a capacity crisis. He wanted to grow from 6 to 9 shops and thought he needed more factory space and freezers to do so. The required investment was risky for his small business. While on holiday, he picked up a copy of Jim Womack and Dan Jones’ Lean Thinking at the airport. By the end of the vacation he returned home ready to experiment with the principles in the book. He partnered with the lean institute, based in Barcelona and has been applying lean thinking ever since with remarkable results.

His wife and co-author, Emi Castro oversees the shops. After starting in their central bakery, they introduced lean thinking to the shops in 2010. They have created a  powerful replenishment system based on the “pull’ principle. It allows a café to serve thousands of customers daily with a storage space the size of a bedroom closet. They also studied and reconfigured the roles of café staff, standardising work and distributing it across the team.

The book gives practical insight into lean thinking in an environment that, we as customers, are all familiar with.