Hyderabad Biryani House: Combining Lean Manufacturing and Lean Service
This caselet is meant for learners pursuing a course in Operations Management. The caselet helps to understand the Lean principles through the issues faced by Hyderabad-based Hyderabad Biryani House (HBH) a restaurant chain that serves varieties of Biryani and side dishes. The company was started, with just one takeaway counter, in 1999. It became popular for its tasty, hygienic and top quality bouquet of biryanis and other accompanying dishes. HBH’s popular dishes include Hyderabadi Biryani (including several non-vegetarian biryanis like Chicken Biryani, Mutton Biryani, Lamb Biryani, Egg Biryani, Dum Biryani, etc.), Lukhmi, Achar Gosht, Haleem and Kababs. Over the years, the chain established 10 outlets in Hyderabad with a centralized kitchen in Nampally, Hyderabad. The outlets serve around 10,000 biryani packets (each packet roughly weighs ½ kg) each day across all its outlets.
The chain’s Founder Muzzafer Ali had been receiving complaints regarding quality of taste from most of the outlets from recent past one to two years (from 2013). He was also informed of few other issues like stock outs/shortage of some items and excess of few items which was wasted.
Aslam Khan (Aslam), the chain’s Head and grandson of HBH Founder Muzzafer Ali, approached a business development consultant and discussed the issue. He suggested to approach a lean methods expert Viswanath for suggestions. Aslam met Viswanath and discussed the same. Viswanath made Abdul Karim, one of his juniors, responsible to implement lean principles at HBH. Abdul went along with Aslam to observe the processes at HBH. He was in a dilemma which principles should be applied ideally at HBH?
Prerequisite Conceptual Understanding and Before the Classroom Discussion
The participants were asked to read the following chapter given as mandatory reading at the end of the caselet to participate effectively and to enrich the learning outcomes:
- • Jay Heizer, et al., “Chapter: JIT and Lean Operations”, Operations Management, 9th Edition, Pearson Education, 2008
Case Positioning and Setting
This caselet can be used in MBA/Executive MBA program for Operations Management course to illustrate the concept of ‘’Lean Principles’ and exemplify its strategic implications.
Assignment Questions
- I. Explain the wastage that you can identify at HBH.
- II. What are the principles that can be applied at HBH to improve its operations?
- III. If you are appointed as a consultant for HBH, what would be your recommendations to solve the issues at HBH?
Suggested Orchestration
The classroom discussion and analysis for this caselet could be summarized and facilitated under two broad sections [Exhibit (TN)-I].........