Atul Gawande wrote a delectable feature in this week’s New Yorker, taking a deep look at The Cheesecake Factory’s business structure, and the possibility of applying it to medicine. It’s equally impressive in it’s depiction of the efficiency-obsessed food giant, and the problems facing inefficient hospitals.
Perhaps the most impressive statistic, though I know I’m missing the larger part of the article, is that Cheesecake Factory has used statistical data to predict restaurant traffic under any variable -this means weather, sporting events, location, time, day-of-week, etc… In doing so, they’ve perfected the amount of perishable inventory necessary to run a restaurant without wasting food or running out.
“The company’s target last year was at least 97.5-per-cent efficiency: the managers aimed at throwing away no more than 2.5 per cent of the groceries they bought, without running out. This seemed to me an absurd target. Achieving it would require knowing in advance almost exactly how many customers would be coming in and what they were going to want, then insuring that the cooks didn’t spill or toss or waste anything. Yet this is precisely what the organization has learned to do. The chain-restaurant industry has produced a field of computer analytics known as ‘guest forecasting.'”
It’s an incredibly important read for anyone looking to get a better understanding of how the medical industry can change, and how the cost of health care can decrease. Ironically enough, the answer might be cheesecake.