Imagine breaking down your long meal assembly line into several smaller units. When you have small 2-3 person teams plating and delivering food in a Lean Work Cell, now you have the POD system. Moreover, without the line, you are assembling trays faster with more adaptive capability. Here are the areas where you will have an overall increase in responsiveness while using a POD tray make up system:
- Assembly Production – A 450 bed hospital using traditional assembly would take approximately 2 hours to assemble and proceed floor by floor. In contrast, the POD approach using 4 cells could have all the trays for each floor being assembled at once and complete their deliveries in up to half that time. Smaller delivery carts allow on host to deliver while the other host is assembling trays with the FTE plating the hot food.
- Patient Preferences – Since one main FTE is in charge of each plate at each POD, you can offer a core favorite menu along with the daily special. The host takes makes personal visits and takes orders for that same day. Having the personal service mutually pleases the patient and motivates the host with more ownership. Combine this with a larger menu selection and you see patient satisfaction scores in the 80thpercentile. Most successful POD systems work with cook -serve hospitals.
- Equipment Flexibility – PODs can be arranged so that 2 lean work cells can share the same equipment. In a 2 sided POD we can shut down one side but keep the other going when the census changes. PODS are easily moved too.
Let us help you with your next POD initiative. Call us with your questions; please contact Lisa at 800-755-4777 or at lisa@dietaryequipment.net. Thanks!
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