Holding Cabinet Concept Analysis Reduces Development Investment

Introduction:

In the competitive quick service restaurant (QSR) industry, lowering the total cost of restaurant operation is a key driver to staying in business. The competing need to support ever increasing menu variety and complexity also results in more rather than less cooking equipment needed in the kitchen. As a result, QSR owners are continually looking for ways to do more with less.

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Customer Challenge:

Food warming and holding cabinets are used by QSRs to heat and store prepared food items prior to sale. Typically, a dedicated cabinet is needed for each menu item. A major QSR franchise realized that if different types of prepared food could be held at various temperatures in the same cabinet, the total number of cabinets needed to support a diverse menu could be reduced. Not only would this potentially reduce equipment costs, it would free up valuable kitchen floor space. The QSR franchise challenged equipment developers serving this industry to produce a multi-zone holding cabinet capable of meeting this requirement.

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Single Iteration Solution:

Initial assessment of this opportunity by a key food equipment OEM was unable to identify a feasible solution concept. No readily available method for maintaining the stringent thermal isolation requirements needed to create the required temperature differential for different food items in the same cabinet was apparent. Furthermore, the OEM was also concerned about shifting engineering resources to a high-risk project when they were already resource constrained by other development programs. The OEM had a difficult but common dilemma; disappoint an important customer by not responding to their latest request or risk schedule problems for other customers when resources are applied to a high-risk development. The OEM approached Single Iteration for assistance. As a result of many years of component and equipment development for food service applications, Single Iteration application specialists were able to quickly and effectively supplement the OEM development staff by taking on responsibility for the majority of the initial development work. As a normal part of the discovery phase, we worked together to come up with a clear understanding of the QSR operator's needs, the OEM's objectives and a working functional specification reflecting the holding cabinet concept. Through the use of our advanced thermal analysis tools we created a theoretical model of the holding cabinet environment to simulate varying application conditions and allow methods of heat delivery, sensing and control to be assessed for performance feasibility. Viable concepts were then evaluated through classical cost/benefit analysis to determine the overall feasibility of the development objectives with respect to cost and schedule. The results of this analysis revealed that while the thermal performance required for a multi-zone holding cabinet could be achieved, the development time and estimated manufacturing cost of the required heating technology far exceeded acceptable investment payback expectations for the industry.

The results of this analysis were disappointing to the OEM; however, it was realized that the disappointment would have been far more severe had they invested hours of fruitless engineering and prototyping only to reach the same conclusion. The feasibility analysis was fast, created conclusive findings concerning the thermal problem, and provided a strong technical foundation for the OEM to discuss the limitations of the development concept with the QSR franchise. While this was also a disappointment to the QSR franchise, the benefit of stopping an impractical development prior to substantial investment was immediately apparent. In addition, the thermal characteristics investigated by the analysis revealed opportunities for other more practical improvements to holding cabinet performance.

Through this development, Single Iteration was able to save the customer substantial time and money that would otherwise have been invested in pursuit of development objectives that could not be feasibly satisfied.