For Halloween yesterday, I decided to stop by the local Krispy Kreme doughnut shop to get some doughnuts for my Halloween party. As I walked in, I was reminded of how impressive the business is. When you open the door, you're faced with a glass wall which displays their fantastic doughnut making process. Like a little boy, I watched as the dough shaped rings rode a conveyer belt through a series of processes from raising the dough to frying and glazing. It was art in the form of entrepreneurial machinery.
When the business started, they owners had one location with one really great doughnut recipe. As their doughnuts got famous, they opened more locations but there was a major problem. The donuts weren't consistent. Some shops were making them better than others. In a stroke of genius, the owners built a machine that would perfectly manufacture their donut every time; they called it The Ring King Jr.
The entrepreneurs knew that if they were to make their business scalable, they had to automate. What better way than to build a machine that would work to perfection every time?
When you walk into your business each morning, there is a core product or service that makes you who you are. According to Michael Gerber, author of The E Myth, you need to understand what that process is and you need to automate it. In so doing, your goal is not to turn it into some thoughtless and careless process that you can forget about; your goal is to make sure that you capture what is special about that product or service perfectly every time. Think about it. Krispy Kreme makes the perfect doughnut. When you go there, you know that you are going to get the perfect doughnut. When they built their doughnut making process, they captured what was best about their product - a perfectly cooked doughnut with glaze that looks like glass.
Take some time off today to walk around your shop, speak with your employees and observe. What critical process could be automated?