MANPOWER AND PRODUCTION PLANNING FOR QUANTITY AND

INSTITUTIONAL FOOD PRODUCTION

MANPOWER PLANNING

Qualitative manpower requirement refers to the qualifications,

skills, knowledge, characteristics and traits needed by a staff to fulfill
the organizations goals.
- pertains to determining the characteristics that define the effective
quantity food production staff and matching this with potentials
candidates to the position.

Qualities of an effective quantity food production in staff:

- Skills and competence is perhaps one of the major requisite for a
food production staff.
- They must be well-trained in the different aspects of their work.
- They must possess the culinary knowledge and skills as well as
know and apply the principles of safety, sanitation, nutrition and
environmental management.
- The work hours of a food service staff can vary from regular shifts
(from 8am 4pm) to irregular splits shifts (10am 12pm and then
6pm 10pm), graveyard shifts (from 10pm 6am) and opening
shifts (from 5am 1pm).
- The staff must also be people oriented
- We cannot choose our customers nor can we separate our physical
product (food and beverage) from the intangible service nor deliver
our products and services in the absence of our guest.
Qualities required of an effective food production staff.
1. High level competence and skills
1.1. Culinary and technical skills
1.2. Communication and social skills
1.3. Learning and adapting skills
1.4. Management skills
2. Physical Qualities
2.1. Excellent physical health
2.2. Good grooming
2.3. Endurance
3. Personality Traits
3.1. Customer/Service oriented (courteous,
warm)
3.2. Team oriented (works well in agroup)
3.3. Efficient and organized
3.4. Self-motivated

hospitable,

friendly,

3.5. Self-disciplined
3.6. Quality oriented
3.7. Loyalty, honesty, dependability, and punctuality
Quantitative manpower requirement refers to determining the
number of staff needed to handle the work load with the highest
degree of efficiency but at the same time minimizing stress and strain
in the work area.

How is the quantitative manpower requirement for food production

determined?
- The amount of labor needed by a proction team depends on many
factors.
- Each one must be carefully considered by the planner in order to
ensure that the workload can be handled by the team and the cost
of labor kept to a minimum.

Quantitative Manpower/Labor

Job Decription
and Work Load

Menu

Layout

Sales
Volume

Hours of
Operatio

Rate of
Service

Equipme
nt Used

Staff
Needs

Productio
n Method

Job Description and Workload

- The starting point of planning how many food production staff is
needed in determining first what needs to be done.
- Duties and responsibilities of each position must be reviewed and
defined properly.
- The procedures in involved have to be properly designed and work
load of each worker taken into a account.

 Sales Volume
- provides information about the peak and slack periods of
operations.
- This must be considered to ensure that employees are kept busy a
greater amount of the time.
Several ways:

Dining Room Customer Tally (manual)

- the diningroom manger counts and records the number of
customers seated in the dining room per hour. Then he records this
in a covers tally sheet and then later summarize the information
and determines the average requirements for the different meal
periods.

Guest Order Tally (manual)

- Guest checks are time stamped in the kitchen as the order is given.
Then, this information is collected and summarized at the end of the
day into a tally sheet. This provides a more accurate and timely
information since customers may stay longer in the dining area
without actually ordering.

Cashier Tally (manual)

- The cashier simply keeps a tally of the guest check as it is settled.
Then it is summarized by the cashier at the end of the day as part
of their reports. Care must however be taken in the use of this
information since the order time and settling of guest bills may be
far from each other because of production delay or delays from the
guest themselves.

MIS (Management Information System) (automated)

- Many ordering, production and cashiering systems are now
interconnected through a computer.
- This provides the planner with more accurate and timely
information.

Type and Rate of Service

Type of Establishment
Small
scale

restaurant

Hospital
Serrvice

No. of Meals

Types of Menu

100 200 lunch and

dinner

Ala carte and table

dhote

Food

450/day
Breakfast,
Lunch and Dinner

Cyclic Menu

Approximate
Production
Requirement
2 supervisors
4 cooks
4 helpers
6 diets
9 cooks

Staff

School Food Service

1350/day (breakfast,
lunch and dinner,
and snacks)

Fixed Menu

Coffee Shop
(with Buffet)

300-400
dinner

Table
dhote
Buffet Menu

Industrial cafeteria

400/day (breakfast,
lunch, dinner and
snacks)

lunch

and

Selective Menu

and

18-20 Food Service

Staff
1 dietitian
1 supervisor
3 cooks
2 cooks helper
4 supervisors
7 cooks
7 helpers
1 dietitian
4 cooks
4 cooks helper

Equipment
- We have to take into account that the more manual the production
area is the more personnel is required.
Layout
- The amount of staff required is also by how space is used in the
production area.
- Proper layout improves the performance of task and thus reduce the
manpower requirement.
Production Method and Menu
- The amount of manpower needed is directly related to the degree
of convenience of the production area.
- This means that the more fully prepared, pre-portioned, and partly
processed the food ingredients used in the kitchen, the lower its
manpower requirement.
- The more raw the ingredients purchased and used in the kitchen,
the more there is to do around it and therefore the higher the
staffing need.
Hours of Operations
- Some establishments do not serve breakfast while others do not
serve dinner. Other serve all of the meal periods or are even open
24 hours a day.
- The more meal periods served, therefore the more manpower is
required.
- Many food production establishments use split shifts in order to cut
down on manpower.
- The one who plans for staffs schedule does not consider this as part
of the 8 hour work load
Staff Needs
The planner must consider the personal situation of the individual
in coming up with the weekly or monthly schedule.

Vacation time due, preferred days-off and personal emergencies

must be considered in advance.
Rotation of staff must also be observed.
Employees should not be constantly kept in one shift, especially the
graveyard shift, even if they are good in this shift.
The rotation is not only necessary to ensure that everyone can
handle any shift they are assigned but also improves the
performance of workers by helping them rest.

PRODUCTION PLANNING
2 aspects of production planning that we would look at:
1. Involves menu planning this entails differentiating the various types
of menus from each other and the different components and
considerations in engineering the menu.
2. The determination of the production quantities needed by the food
service establishment.

Menu Planning
1. Customer Profile. The menu must satisfy the individual needs of
customers. It must meet local taste, attract customers and promote
business.
2. Cost and Price. It should be within the customers expectations
and paying ability.
3. Service Time. The menu should consider the nature of the food
being
served during specific meal periods. This should be
appropriate not only in amount and taste but also in the speed of
preparation and service.
4. Supply. The menu should take into account seasonableness and
availability of ingredients. This is especially true for seafood, since
they may contain toxins during certain months of the year.
5. Kitchen Staff, Plant, and Equipment. It is one thing to make a
menu the looks good but it is another thing to prepare it. The menu
is only useful if the staff, kitchen and equipment are sufficient to
handle it.
6. Balance. The balance of a menu refers to the harmony and variety
of a number of food properties such as texture, color, flavor, variety
and economics. All of these have to be considered to attain a
balance in the items served on the plate, in the items selected for

one meal, and in the items from meal to meal and day to day
especially in a captive situation such as school cafeteria.
Different types of menu:
1. The Ala carte menu
- offers a large selection of dishes, which are individually priced.
- Customers can choose and combine their own meal from a selection
on the menu card.
- Incorporate the price of the vegetables and cereals in the main
course.
- Requires a well equipped kitchen as well a high number of well
trained staff.
- Will also offer one or more specialties.
- This are often either inserted on the regular menu as a separate
leaflet or written in a speacialty board either at the door or inside
the restaurant.
2. Table dhote
- Hosts or hoteliers table is composed of a set menu or a group of
several set menus that have fixed prices.
- There are less choices because of the fact that the guests are
limited to the offered combinations or even have no choice at all.
- A variation of this is to vary the price based on the main protein
dish (meat more expensive than poultry, poultry more expnsive
than fish) or to add an additional sum to the fixed price for certain
selections.
3. Selective Menu
- A cross between table dhote and ala carte.
- Has a limited number of choice within a fixed price menu, within a
fixed number of courses.
When planning a selective menu one can plan along the
following lines:
a. Four to six appetizers
b. Five to eight entrees
c. Three to six vegetables or salads
d. Four to eight desserts
4. Static Menu
- One that remains relatively unchanged for a long period of time.
- Used by large restaurant chains that require consistent and very
popular products to attract customers.
- Enables purchasing and production to centralize its activities or at
least systematize the food production and service procedures.
5. Cyclic Menus
- One which is rotated or repeated in a predetermined pattern.
- Can be two, three, four weeks long or even more.
- Not advisable to plan for too long a menu cycle.

It is advisable to consider that the cycle should run three to four

times within a planning period in order to at least measure its
popularity.
- Planning properly is important in order to avoid menu fatigue
6. Market Menus
- Menus that respond to season and availability.
- Usually found in speacialty gourment restaurants and high priced
restaurants.
- Uses the same principle as the daily or weekly specials found in
restaurants.
- Used as a powerful marketing tool attracting customers by
providing something unique or different.
Determining Production Value
- Accurate forecasting assures operations of lesser leftover, waste
and cost.

How is the production quantity determined?

Three Elements:
1. Maintaning Sales History
a. Involves recording the sales of items per day. This is done
through the sales breakdown tally sheet and record of sales
history.
b. Involves determining the relative popularity of the different
dishes in the menu through what is known as a popularity index.
2. Forecasting Portion Sales
- Forecasting means using past experiences, present data, and
intuition to predict what is likely to occur in the future
Three steps:
Step 1. Predict total anticipated sales volume. This can be done
by basing the future value from past sales, records, then
correcting this using present information on new bookings and
even orders. Then other conditions such as season, weather, and
special events are plugged in.
Step 2. Forecast the anticipated number of sales of each menu
item. This is done by multiplying the total anticipated sales
volume (volume forecast) by the individual popularity indexes in
column 2.
Step 3. Refer forecast to management fir adjustment and
correction and disseminate
3. Determine Prduction Quantity

In determining the final amount needed to be produced, the

forecasted amount determined above must be corrected by looking
at the amount of the products still on hand.
Production Sheet
a. Menu Item. It gives a listing of the name of the items in the
menu.
b. Forecast. This is the amount required for the period as
determined in the forecasting process.
c. Portion Size. This indicates the standard amount of one serving
of the products set by management.
d. Recipe reference. This indicates which recipe is being used for
the item. This is especially useful when there is more than one
recipe variation for the same item.
e. Portion on Hand. This is the record of what was not consumed
by past functions and is therefore still available for use.
f. Needed by production. This is the difference between the
forecast quantity and the portion on hand. This represents what
still needs to be produced.
g. Total available. This is the total amount of the item that can be
served. This is the sum of the production need and portion on
hand, which should also be equal to the forecasted amount.
h. Left over. This is a record of what was not consumed after the
operating period or function. The left over column will be carried
over as on hand if the product can still be stored and reused.
When the column is too high, it is good indication that the
forecasting process is faulty.