Lions, tigers, and lean: a safari park joins the process improvement loop.

WHEN LOOKING FOR WAYS TO ELIMINATE repetitive and wasteful activities, lean thinking is viewed as the solution to track costs so as to obtain flexible and adaptive processes. Although the underlying lean philosophy can be transferred to the service industry, differences between service and manufacturing may arbitrate the success rate of changes that are made. For example, in a manufacturing context, the value of a product often relates to the specific functionality of the product, and it is therefore relatively easy to distinguish between value adding and non-value adding activities. In the service sector, however, the customer participates directly in the production of the service. The rapport between staff and customer has a significant impact on the added value perceived by the customer. When implementing lean, it is essential to involve the work force because they understand the processes best and their involvement may help sustain the changes made.

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This article reports on a project at Woburn Safari Park (WSP), a 48-acre safari park in Buckinghamshire, England. The park dates back to 1970, and with its more than 40 different species and more than 450,000 annual visitors, it is among the 10 largest wildlife attractions and zoos in the United Kingdom. WSP falls into the leisure sector and--as with other similar businesses--the customer interface for many aspects of experience with WSP occurs during the actual customer experience at the park. Although this customer intimacy is viewed as an advantage to WSP, the closeness could also be very risky in a business that depends heavily on word-of-mouth recommendations to attract customers.

WSP's management committed to implementing lean thinking to help reach their stated mission of being financially secure while providing the United Kingdom with a premier leisure destination.

The park

A circus family initially managed the safari park with facilities originally designed to last 25 years; during that time, no attempt was made to renew the facilities. When the current management took over in 1993, there was very low staff morale, the park was losing money, and the facilities needed replacement. Nevertheless, the management has turned the park into a profitable enterprise that employs 68 full-time staff while sustaining processes that stabilize the animals' lives. Due to the nature of the business and the seasonal fluctuations, about 200 seasonal staff members participate as needed.

Today, an award-wining attraction, WSP makes a valuable contribution to conservation and research. The park offers customers a full day of entertainment and education, combining awe-inspiring sights of Safari Drive with the up-close interaction of Foot Safari and the Wild World Leisure Area. Observation of feeding time with the animals, along with demonstrations by the keepers, prompts families and entire schools to return on a seasonal basis.

The organization of WSP follows a typical functional structure comprising seven areas: retail, education, animal collection, maintenance and facilities, leisure, administration, and catering. The current CEO believes there is a six-figure saving to be made by reducing overheads within the different departments in the park.

The project

WSP commissioned process improvement work to Cranfield University's manufacturing department with the help of six master's degree students focused on manufacturing consultancy. One of the few postgraduate-only universities in the United Kingdom, Cranfield holds a long-standing reputation for being industrially relevant because the students have exposure to tackling real industrial problems through sophisticated projects. Businesses benefit from embarking on this type of low-cost, low-risk but high-impact project, as the match explores various routes to new capability and access to existing expertise at the university.

Objectives of the lean undertaking were defined to achieve the overall aim of the project:

* Understand the relationship between customer expectations and value-adding activities to direct focus appropriately.

* Establish reference data that captures current processes and their associated resource requirement. Identify and prioritize key processes.

* Analyze key processes to determine the flow of value, information, and resources.

* Propose and validate possible improvements to key processes that would generate maximum benefits while having the shortest payback period.

* Ensure improvement sustainability through obtaining employee buy-in and knowledge management.

During the first stage of the project, WSP departments were analyzed for a clear overview of the park's everyday affairs and to identify each department's specific activities with areas for improvement being highlighted. At the end of this stage, a review meeting enabled WSP management to obtain their input and buy-in to the five key areas. In the second stage, the current state maps were produced for the five key processes identified. The goal of this stage was to identify waste in terms of time, transportation, and money. The findings were submitted for validation to the staff and to discuss potential solutions. In the final stage, four areas were analyzed more deeply in order to elaborate future state maps. Again, these areas are very different and the work was not necessarily to find the solutions to the problems, but rather to develop recommendations to help reach a leaner situation.

Current state of feed logistics

Among areas investigated in this project (entrance management, customer flow, and retail inventory management, for example), feed logistics appeared as a critical operation to improve (Figure 1). Feed logistics is the management and distribution of feed throughout the park from receipt by the suppliers into the storage locations, preparation areas, and ultimately to the animals. Two main areas of investigation within feed logistics took precedent: the flow of feed from supplier to animal (downstream dispatch network) and the flow of information in the other direction (upstream information flow).

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The downstream dispatch network includes all the movements, storage locations, and distribution of feed. The dispatch network for the Animals Encounters area is shown in Figure 2, which illustrates complexity that has developed in the systems over time. Accounting for various animals, this feed network includes the dispatching activity of different types of food and their frequencies and movements within the park from supplier to the end consumer.

Suppliers deliver to three major warehouses on the park and then to secondary warehouses. From these secondary warehouses, the teams provide food to the animals for which they are responsible. The dispatch process is performed according to different frequencies defined by the animal requirements and constraints of WSP. Within the current dispatch system, assorted patterns have been identified in the food preparation: some of the teams prepare the food in the warehouse; others prepare it in the secondary warehouses, designated preparation areas, and directly in front of the animal. No proper inventory control management is currently performed. Each employee oversees the visual review of the quantities in the different locations, and, depending on the level of stock, the decision of whether to re-order is taken.

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The upstream information flow includes the dietary demand of each animal, the requirements of each team based on the demand of the animals in their area, and orders based on aggregated requirements across teams. The sequence for ordering feedstuffs is as follows: Senior members of staff monitor stock in the feed store on a weekly basis and draw up what is needed for the following week. If the animal teams do not send their requirements, the person in charge of ordering assumes the amount required to be ordered compares to the amount ordered the week before.

Keepers are aware of animal requirements, but information was not documented for many years--the "system" was based on each staff member's individual memory. In the phases of lean transformation, the team carried out an exhaustive documentation of the animals' diets in order to understand the animal requirements and the corresponding demand.

Once the diets for each animal were gathered, the team then consolidated the requirements for all the animals in the park and linked them with their respective suppliers and costs. No information with this level of detail previously existed within the park, with the analysis demonstrating that the park had key suppliers--two of which represent 65 percent of expenditures.

The keepers do not perceive any added value to spending time on activities such as handling of feed, administration tasks, or warehouse management, as the perception is that time spent with the animals is more value adding.

Future state of feed logistics