The work activity as an interface among different logics: The case of distributing food in a university restaurant

Abstract

BACKGROUND:

Work activity integrates the tasks to be performed, the means of work available, the instructions, the rules to be observed, the particular factors related to the individuals (skills, inner state), and the effects both on the task and on the operator. By analyzing the activity, the different logics and conflicts in the design of production systems are revealed.

OBJECTIVE:

To show how the work activity can support the transformation of the working conditions, when revealed by an ergonomic intervention, by integrating the different design standpoints, which are always present in the project’s work situations.

METHODS:

For this case study, the Ergonomic Work Analysis (EWA) was used on the staff that serves meals at a new university restaurant in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) with a focus on the portioning of the transported ready-cooked meals and the variability related thereto. The results of observations, verbalizations, self-confrontations and strategy analysis, collected through field notes and audio and photographic records, became a final report submitted to the directors of the university restaurant.

RESULTS:

This research showed that the work activity of the serving maids helped to reveal the different logics of the heterogeneous actors in the design of the work situation under analysis. The work activity, when revealed by an ergonomic intervention, can be an interface during the design process to articulate these different logics and to support the dialog among different design standpoints. Thus, the concept of fixed portioning became a concept of flexible portioning, which provided the serving maids with an increased autonomy level at the counter, thus improving both the quality of services and the working conditions of those involved therewith.

CONCLUSIONS:

The activity-focused design can be understood as an ongoing, multiple logical process whereby workers bring the design into their workplaces, which reveals aspects of their own activity, thus helping to change the initial concepts. The ergonomic intervention, based on the revealed activity, helps to highlight the existence of different logics and also to support the actors in articulating their own logics during the design process.

Keywords

Work activity integration interface logics design process

1 Introduction

The objective of this article is to discuss to what extent an activity revealed during work analysis can be used as an interface to support the dialog between different actors in the design process. The objective herein is investigated in a case study of the redesign of a university restaurant production system.

The concepts of work activity, interface, and logics of the project are presented herein with the aim of contributing to the development of project-related participatory approaches.

In the tradition of activity-related ergonomics [1 –3], the field where this work is situated, the activity is often presented as having an integrative function [4].

By saying so, we mean that the activity performs an evaluation of coherence among different elements in the work system: tasks to be performed, means of work available, rules and elements specific to the individual (competences, inner state) [4, 5]. In this sense, the activity is characterized as an organizer and integrator of the various technical elements of the system [6] and of the different logics of the design actors playing a role in the work situations. Therefore, the activity can be represented by a cell (Fig. 1) crossed by different elements [7, p. 109].

Fig.1

The integrative dimension of activity [7, p. 109].

They are the organizational, technical, social, hierarchical “force lines”. In addition, these force lines may represent the logics of the project’s actors, heterogeneous by nature – experts of the different professional worlds, those responsible for the project’s design and execution and for the productive process, the company’s customers, the suppliers etc.

There emerges the concept of interface based on the activity analysis as a possible contribution to the participative ergonomics. In ergonomics, the interface is presented as a physical or logical device that provides connections among systems or parts of a system. The use of this device brings together participants who have the opportunity to accommodate different views and to establish agreements when interacting with one another. Thus, by means of this interface, for example, the professional worlds [2] during the work system’s project design manage to come together in the process of construction and exchange of experience [8].

This notion of the interface originates in the social interface, defined by Long [9] as the critical point of intersection among different worlds, social fields or levels of a social organization, in which discontinuities or discrepancies in values, interests, knowledge or power can be identified. Interface interactions, even assuming some degree of common interest among the actors, can also generate conflicts due to contradicting interests and objectives or even unequal power relations.

1.1 The project of a University Restaurant

Recent policies adopted by the Brazilian government address, among other topics, the democratization of the permanence of students in unfavorable socioeconomic conditions at the university, and of food and nutrition security in general [10 –12]. To adjust to these external factors, a project for implementing a University Restaurant (UR), which is in line with the modern principles of collective catering, was developed in one university in Rio de Janeiro city.

Collective catering is an increasingly important part of the daily lives of people in Brazil and has had considerable growth worldwide. Based on this paradigm, the producers adopt new methods of purchase, consumption and communication with the end consumer. Thus, they exercise new alternative ways of production and work organization, besides innovations that can improve production, transport and logistics.

However, the end users’ response to the design results can be impaired by the complexity of the interaction among users, technologies and social structures. From this point of view, the restaurant is not just a commercial establishment of preparation and distribution of meals. It is a complex sociotechnical system, characterized by formal and informal interactions existing among the different actors involved in the productive process. To carry out their tasks, in the real work situations, the people involved in the productive process need to integrate the various technical elements (technical system, conception) and the individual logics of the many participating actors (social system, execution).

In the case of the UR studied herein, problems related to the users’ dissatisfaction aroused from the beginning, for example, with the taste of some ingredients in the menu; high turnover of the outsourced company’s employees; imbalance between offer and demand of meals (surplus or shortage of food); and the kitchen assistants’ complaints about the poor working conditions.

The ergonomic analysis was then called upon by one of the UR directors as a contribution, since the project is proposed to be a benchmark in administrative and academic conception for collective catering.

In the case studied herein, an analysis of the kitchen assistants’ activity at the UR serving counter was conducted. The activity revealed thereby allowed for establishing an interface among the parties involved in the project (from the university and the contracted company: managing directors, nutritionists, other professionals and, in particular, the female workers).

What is discussed here is that the development of this interface, at the project meetings or at the system management meetings, provides integration at the operational level, which can lead to a revision of the design of the work systems, thereby minimizing risks to the workers and to the company.

2 The work activity as an interface among the different logics of the project’s actors

As shown by the practices of ergonomic intervention, in general, those who are responsible for the design of organizations, particularly for the design of workstations, have only a partial or incomplete representation of the actual work [13]. As a result, the projects, particularly the work systems, often lack greater coherence among their different elements and the logics that make them up: the employees, each with their individual characteristics, the prescribed tasks, the company’s external and internal conditions, the equipment, materials, spaces and so on [4 , 14].

Through their intervention, the ergonomists try to explain that, for good operation, the technical elements, the interactions, the social mechanisms and the pre-existing rules in the work situations need to be considered [15 –19].

Then, this comprehension is achieved through the activity analysis, which allows for understanding how the different elements and logics that make up the systems relate to one another [2, 4].

By analyzing the activity, ergonomists stress the difference between prescribed and actual work and reveal the variability of the relevant elements of the work situations and the operators’ inner state. Operators are not the ones who perform lower-end hierarchy tasks at the workstation. They create their own mobilization. In the context of their work, they articulate requirements of their tasks, their will to self-preservation, to be successful, and to learn. They regulate their work to the results their activities deliver, both from the viewpoint of task objectives and from their effects over the operator’s self and over the collectives [20, p. 18].

This form of interpretation emphasizes the understanding of the activity in a real situation, migrating from a context of human factors to a context of human actors [22], in which the human potential of engineers, designers, employers, managers, and the workers themselves is emphasized.

2.1 The integrating function of the activity

When developing an activity, the worker naturally establishes commitments among the various components and elements of the work situation [7]. On the one hand, there are their own characteristics, the aspects related to their health and safety and the tasks they are assigned; on the other hand, there are the company’s logics and requirements (production, quality) and the production goals (Fig. 2) [23, p. 12]. The dynamics of this relationship is complex [2 , 23], and it is the activity (an invisible element) that organizes these different elements and components existing in the work situation [7]. The work activity includes the discrepancy between “what is expected” and “what actually occurs” [the contradiction between “what is asked” and “what the situation requires”]. The worker does what has to be done, that is, he/she develops strategies to manage the conflicts arising from the logics diversity in work situations.

Fig.2

Activity model as an integrator (adapted from [19, p. 12]).

Due to the integrative dimension of the activity, it is possible to compare the activity (or the workplace) with a cell, which is crossed by different lines of force and logics [7, p. 109; refer to Fig. 1]. The work analysis allows for making these different elements explicit, and may show how they are integrated by the workers in carrying out their operations. This integration, which occurs at the time of the execution of tasks, usually occurs silently and covertly, since most of the work activity is not visible [24].

The exposure of the activity then allows for the discussion of the contradictions between the different elements and logics, and shows the resulting effects (either positive or negative) for the work situations (Fig. 3, [4, p.27]).

Fig.3

The determiners of work activity [4, p. 27].

Positive or constructive conflicts, as part of a constant negotiations dialog of various interests and differences, open space for mutual learning processes [2, 25]. Whereas the non-constructive ones [the misunderstandings due to the diversity of viewpoints or to which goals prevail over each one or due to the urgency of problem solving etc.] reflect on the execution of the activities and may affect both the workers’ health and the company’s performance.

These logics are not limited to the professional designers, but include those of all the participants in project development and implementation [26, p. 304]. When the different logics “of the model” and “of the actual” enter in the contradiction, the revealed activity can allow for the project’s actors to negotiate their commitments, aiming to solve their conflicts.

2.2 The logics of the project

The concept of logics has been used in the academic world and is of interest to various disciplines. Thornton [27] classifies the institutional logics into six large sets or groups: markets, corporations, professions, states, families, religions. Each group is ordered around regimes of practice constituted by specific sets of rules, roles and categories, co-implicated in each logic: (i) rules enforced [imposed] by different forms of coercion; (ii) roles based on the production of certain values and (iii) categories that outline the real logic [reality] [28].

In this context, the social structures are seen as being full of resources and meanings [29], and the logics help to understand the interrelations among institutions, individuals and organizations in social systems [30].

In this study, the notion of logics refers to the concept of professional world [2]. It can be defined as a set of implicit, axiological and practical concepts that form a system with the object of the action. The same work situation usually integrates the logics of the different professional worlds that make up any system. In the same organization, there is a multiplicity of views, which are expressed through formal and informal means [4, 16]. However, there is an inherent contradiction between the institutional logic of the professions and the organization’s objectives and means of control. Professions are organized so that their members create knowledge and systems of belief that define their areas of interest and expertise, not necessarily aligned with the organization’s interests [31].

Ergonomists seek to understand what the formation of the social field of the organizations is like – in particular, the formation of the professional field of that department or sector that is closely related to other fields in the company (suppliers, contracted companies, customers etc.). The analysis of the existing logics in an organization, in a project, in a work situation helps to understand how their differences can coexist; how the contradictions among their varied nature can lead to conflicts among the actors in the project, mainly when certain logics are prioritized over others.

Through the investigation of logics, it is therefore possible to understand the reasons for the variety of actions and solutions in the daily work [32]. By assessing the different practices and efforts, this knowledge makes it possible to improve the possibilities of development and to anticipate concepts [design concepts for the future] [33, p. 279].

2.3 Work activity as an interface

Social interface is also presented as a methodological device that provides the opportunity to identify and analyze the critical points of intersection among different areas or levels of a social organization, such as the discrepancies and discontinuities of values, interests, knowledge and power [9].

For Long [9], once the critical points among the different areas are identified, the interfaces can be mediated and transformed into confrontation and articulation points. In other words, they open spaces to see and understand the rising conflicts, as well as their types and origins.

In a survey conducted in the rural sector, Long [25], whose works aim at the development of interventions, identifies four characteristics of the interfaces: (i) interfaces develop and gradually tend to become organized entities of relations and of articulated intentionality among themselves, (ii) any interface assumes a common goal among the actors; they have a tendency to reveal and generate conflicts in the context of power relations, (iii) interfaces are often a means whereby the individuals or the different parties involved define their own positions from different points of view, and (iv) knowledge is a socially-determined, cognitive construction that emerges from the interfaces and, thus, the interfaces contribute to knowledge development curves.

In ergonomics, it is considered that the analysis of the interfaces among the different professional worlds provides for the construction of a common dialog to everyone involved in the project design process, defined by Béguin [2] as the common world concept. These communication bridges among the participants in the operation of a production system may become spaces for conducting knowledge confrontations and experience exchange among the various experts and professionals, whose points of view, qualifications, necessities and logics are naturally divergent.

One of the objectives of the analysis of interfaces is to understand and explain, through the meetings, how the actors manage to establish a process of knowledge-building and mutual learning [25, 33]. Based on the negotiation of their differences, the actors may (or may not) solve the conflicts among their different viewpoints.

3 Case settings: The new UR catering system

One of the assumptions of the project for the new University Restaurant (UR) was to promote a new healthy eating culture amongst its customers, which includes students and employees. After over 15 years without a university restaurant, the current initiative is characterized by innovations for the companies involved and definitely for the university. The first innovation is that the proposed organizational structure assigned the coordination of the Catering System to the university’s Institute of Nutrition. Thereby, new and different administrative responsibilities were incorporated to that unit, and social commitments were aggregated to the academic qualification. The second innovation is to make the project a benchmark in academic and administrative concept. And the third one is that the Catering System could be a center for professional training and qualification in the areas involved. Within this framework, the university’s Catering System has become a field of research and study on health and on administration and management.

The project’s dimension can be evaluated by some indicators – during the approximately 18 months of the research period, nutritiously balanced food, transported in large quantities (approximately 3,500 lunch and 900 dinner servings) were served daily in the three dining areas of the restaurants 5 days a week. After being delivered to the cafeterias, the ready-made elements are mixed and served by the kitchen assistants at the meal serving counter. If some cooking is still required, the combined ovens are used. Juice is the only item in the menu that is made fresh (water, sugar, fruit pulp).

The distribution of meals started at three cafeterias of the university campus. An outsourced company in an industrial kitchen, off campus, prepares all the meals. The ready-made food is transported in large quantities for 42 km. With this initiative, the university intended to guarantee to its employees and students a nutritiously-balanced diet that is also culturally diversified and secure from the hygienic-sanitary point of view and at low cost to the customers. These factors are considered indispensable for retaining people in the academic environment.

The main actors involved in the project and who were analyzed during the study are the following:

The university, represented by the UR director, who is part of the board of the university’s catering system (and is an assistant professor at the university’s Department of Nutrition and Dietetics); and by the nutritionists, who are part of the nutrition sector of the same university. This team is responsible for estimating the number of monthly meals and for overseeing the service in general. Based on nutrition studies, the concept of “fixed portioning” was developed – a planned, healthy meal, with quality and quantity of nutritiously-balanced ingredients, at low cost, to be served to the students. Besides, the menu may not repeat the same recipe more than twice a month.

The outsourced company, responsible for the whole productive process, is headquartered in the city, 42 km from the university, where an industrial kitchen is available and the stocks are kept. Also, the board of directors, a team of nutritionists who run the production and transport of the meals, the staff who work in the kitchen, and those who transport the ready-made meals work at these facilities. At the university, the company operates the three UR dining areas, where there is a team of nutritionists, kitchen assistants and assistants. The production process consists of the following steps: at the company’s facilities: preparation and transport; at the dining areas: receiving and control, finalization and regeneration, maintenance, qualitative analysis and other controls, distribution at the counter, cleaning and washing, garbage collection and shipment of the thermal boxes for storage and transport of the ready-made meals.

Under the contract signed with the university, the company is paid per meal distributed at the counter based on the concept of fixed portioning. Thus, each ingredient must be served strictly in accordance with the definition of portioning, which should not be altered. It is prepared one month in advance and, finally, defined on a daily basis by the two teams of nutritionists, one from the university and one from the company. When the meals are not enough or some failure occurs in the portioning, the contracted company may be fined. To avoid this kind of penalty and to try to secure maximum sales of meals, the company’s nutritionists inspect the kitchen assistant’s work. Thus, the kitchen workers ultimately control and monitor the amount of food served, and also regulate the number of meals served by adjusting the portions when necessary.

The customers in the university restaurant are mostly active students of the different colleges and the university’s employees and collaborators. Customers’ age ranges from 16 to 60 and includes students and employees of both genders.

4 Methods

The research question aimed to investigate, in a case study involving the UR project’s catering system, how the work activity – when revealed by an ergonomic intervention – can integrate the different design standpoints, which are always present in the project’s work situations, thus transforming the concepts of the project and consequently improving the working conditions of the kitchen assistants.

The board of directors of the new UR project invited the author to evaluate the installed distribution system for ready-made and transported meals of the university restaurant. The case study was theoretically supported by the three concepts (work activity, interface, project logics) and the main challenge was to develop an interface, based on the work activity concept, that could help the negotiations and redesign the performance of a better restaurant production system. It was done in the two phases depicted below:

Analysis of the kitchen assistants’ activities.

In this first phase, the main focus was the distribution activity of the different menu items carried out by the kitchen assistants at the serving counter. The EWA initial demand (the overall scheme of which may be seen in Guérin et al. [4]) was to understand the high level of turnover among the workers and the complaints related to the kitchen assistants’ physical fatigue and mental strain.

To carry out this first phase, the procedures adopted by the author, were as follows: observations, verbalizations, self-confrontations [34], [when the systematic analysis was carried out], with the kitchen workers through registers in a field notebook, photos and audio recordings. The self-confrontation interviews were performed with the kitchen assistants and the nutritionists individually and then in groups. These activity descriptions were filled out during the systematic observations of serving, particularly the portioning of the different transported salad ingredients.

Based on the previous analysis of the overall operation at the main sectors of this dining area, the distribution counter was chosen for systematic analysis, particularly, the workstation where the kitchen assistants serve salads. Such choice can be justified by the following reason: the kitchen workers who carried out the serving tasks at the counter related most of the complaints of pains and discomfort. The activity related to portioning of the different salad ingredients, considered by the kitchen assistants themselves as one of the most complex and stressing workstations, was observed and systematic analysis was conducted. The kitchen assistants’ activities were registered in activity description forms, which were used to register an activity in action. By using this tool, the ergonomist can attach photos and other multimedia to describe better, and in detail with comments, how people performed their activities in real-life situations at their workplace. These forms were filled out during the systematic observation of serving, particularly the portioning of the different transported salad ingredients.

The workers’ verbalization and explanation about their understanding of the tasks, objectives, assumptions and problems tackled during their everyday work challenges led to the identification of the main logics at the serving counter: (i) the outsourced company’s logic, (ii) the university’s nutritionists’ logic and (iii) the UR customers’ logic.

Transformation meetings.

Based on the AET report and on oral presentation, the researcher discussed with the UR’s director the results of the ergonomic intervention on the UR project. The director brought such information to the project meetings for discussion among the various parties involved– the project’s design and management, executors and operators. These meetings were held to discuss possible solutions to the existing problems and to improve the performance of the project as a whole.

The second phase of the intervention was built within two meeting levels: 1) The first level meetings were planned and structured by the research author (an ergonomist) around the results of the kitchen assistants’ work analysis and involved only the UR project directors. The report, containing the methodology, EWA results and the key elements, was presented by an ergonomist [to 3 directors] in 5 meetings. The oral presentations were made through power point slides and the printed report. The researcher presented and explained the origins of the strategies developed by the kitchen assistants during portioning and distribution of meals. Said meetings showed the directors the actual activity of kitchen workers and the difficulties they are faced with every day.

2) In the second level, the project meetings level, one of the UR project directors presented the EWA results to all the actors involved in the project and in the production process: the university director and the team of nutritionists (responsible for the project, design of the work system and control and supervision of the production process); the contracted company’s board of directors, nutritionists and the kitchen assistants themselves (responsible for the production process). The EWA data presented (kitchen assistants’ strategies, the determiners for the activities, the characterization of the work situation and consequences thereof in terms of work conditions) became the interface for the dialog amongst the participants. The ergonomists also participated in 5 of these meetings, which were held at the UR installations and were initially scheduled to take place on a weekly basis and soon afterwards were held monthly. The role of the ergonomist was to register the debates and later to analyze them, so as to provide feedbacks for the other meetings.

5 Results

This article presented the kitchen assistants’ activity at the serving counter as an interface among the different participants involved in the UR operation review meetings. The study of the problems that aroused in the beginning of the operation of the UR’s catering system made clear that, in the first stages of the project design, there was a gap among the different logics of the actors involved and, as a consequence, the work system design presented a lack of knowledge about the future actual work situations and the variability thereof.

5.1 The integrating function of the kitchen assistants’ activity

The analysis of the kitchen assistants’ activity highlighted the fact that the actors involved in the project – the kitchen workers, the nutritionists and the restaurant users – had distinct logics. The origins of these conflicts were the motivation for a review of the project’s initial concepts.

Like any other production system, the UR is ruled by several prescriptions and variability such as alterations in the quality of the raw material; production errors (in the kitchen); transport delays due to traffic jams; power outage or water shortage at the university or at the company; communication problems (telephone, internet). Such variability represents the origin of the difficulties faced by the catering system adopted.

One of the main characteristics of ready-to-eat food is its being subjected to the binomial “time×temperature”. The compromise between these two factors generates the need for a series of specific controls throughout the life cycle of the ready-to-eat foods (packing conditions, transport conditions etc.). These demands and controls (and other requirements, such as: preserving the quality of the meals served, preventing waste and loss of raw materials etc.) aim at showing the complexity of the work of the restaurant’s nutritionists and characterizes the difficulty for the kitchen assistants during the portioning activity.

The kitchen workers (under the orientation and supervision of the contracted company’s nutritionists) must always be on the alert to everything that happens during the productive process. Even if the “limits” of their chores were not well described in the contract, in some situations it was difficult to prevent and anticipate problems. For example, when they open the first food container with the items from the kitchen and perform the first evaluation on the quality and quantity of the raw material received. Later, if the two teams of nutritionists (from the university and from the contracted company) decide that one of the ingredients cannot be served and has to be replaced, the kitchen assistants make an effort to fulfill the new task, dealing with the setbacks as well as possible. They look for ways to interact by mobilizing and organizing themselves within the limited time: “It is tiring here, we have to think about everything all the time. While I’m doing one thing, I have to be alert and calculating another. And there is always someone watching you... we get nervous, it’s stressing”, one of the workers reported.

Through the EWA, an attempt was made to make evident that the kitchen assistants’ activity during the portioning of the different (transported) ingredients of the menu, at the counter, may help to improve the catering system, since they have an integrating function of the different parts of the UR project. In especial, it acts as an element that provides a connection among the logics of the several actors in the production system.

5.2 The different logics and their consequences

During the observation at the counter, the kitchen workers emphasized that it is a great challenge to perform the ‘fixed portioning’ of the different menu ingredients, defined and demanded by the university’s team of nutritionists. Taking into account the different logics involved and identifying which one must prevail at a given moment, at the counter, gets them anguished and raises their mental and emotional strain. They explained that the main logics they deal with, at the counter, stemmed from the difference between necessities made up by the various actors’ objectives and demands. The kitchen assistants’ actual work situation analysis revealed many conflicts that exist among these three main logics.

The outsourced company’s logic: to avoid the fines laid down in the contract. The kitchen assistants are on the alert all the time, while serving the meals (approximately 2 hours), to avoid shortage of any ingredient in the menu, thus preventing the company from being fined. They perform many control activities to match [by adjusting in real time] the offer and demand of meals: by controlling that the number of meals served is not less than what was planned for that day, by controlling the measure of portioning of the ingredients (by altering the measure of the fixed portioning, if necessary); by counting the number of meals distributed and the ones still in stock etc.

The university nutritionists’ logic: to guarantee food security to the users; to promote a healthy eating culture; to make the UR a learning, research and innovation nucleus. The nutritionists’ focus – to serve nutritiously-balanced meals – requires that the kitchen assistants try to persuade the UR users to accept the “fixed portioning”, and even to accept those less desirable ingredients, such as some highly nutritious vegetables, which the young users are not used to eating. The kitchen workers also perform another task, an educative role of teaching and explaining to the users the advantages of a nutritiously-balanced meal.

The UR users’ logic: to eat a tasty meal fast and at low cost. The face-to-face contact with the users at the serving counter was another great challenge for the kitchen assistants. At this moment, which lasts just a few seconds, they try to assess the person’s profile and decide whether or not to alter the fixed portioning measure. To do so, with the help of their nutritionists, the workers always know what is happening at the counter, at the stock and at the dining area.

Depending on changes in the situation, they know which of the logics should prevail at the counter. For example: (i) to meet the demand of the UR team’s logic, which determines fixed portioning; (ii) to meet the demand of the company’s logic to sell more meals or, to make sure the company does not get fined by altering the fixed portioning measure; (iii) to favor the users’ private orders, since the kitchen assistants know that the student may dispose of some of the undesirable ingredients.

Therefore, the serving counter presents itself as the fusion point of these three different worlds, with their contradictory logics that converge at the precise moment when the workers does the portioning. The incoherence among these heterogeneous logics creates some imbalance in the productive process and affects the execution of tasks at the counter. For example: contrary to what the university nutritionists took as an assumption, when defining the household measure and the fixed portioning, in practice, the users do not have an “average” profile. The kitchen assistant tries to serve each user individually, breaking the logic of the university team. Thereby, she is ultimately responsible for the end of the conception, right there at the counter, for the end product/ service, which should satisfy, the best way possible, all the required logics and be in accordance with the level of demand (risk) of the moment.

5.3 Integration of logics in the activity: Fixed portioning

The kitchen assistants pointed salad distribution as the most complex activity because it is made up by several ingredients that must be portioned at the time of serving. As there is no time for accurate calculation of the portions, the workers adopted a strategy - “regulation of an average amount per food container. This strategy takes into account that each food container of different salad ingredients serves approximately 50 portions. So, instead of calculating each portion, the kitchen assistant opens each container and tries to visually distribute the ingredients equally in the salad bowls to achieve an “average amount” for a total of 50 portions. If the worker notices that the number of salad portions to be served will not be enough, which could ultimately result in a fine to the company, and in order to meet the demand, she regulates the portioning to prevent shortage of any salad ingredient. To do so, she communicates the problem to the company’s head nutritionist and together they make adjustments to control the amount of all the salad ingredients still in stock and that have to be served. When they notice that there may not be enough salad for everybody, the kitchen assistant “holds back” the raw material, serving smaller portions than those planned by the nutritionists. The workers mentioned that the UR nutritionist team vetoes this strategy and it represents as a source of tension when applied.

Thus, by portioning the different ingredients in the menu, the kitchen workers try to make the system as a whole reach some coherence among the different elements and conflicting logics (of the UR nutritionists, of the contracted company’s nutritionists and of the UR customers). To do so, they create strategies that help to solve the conflicts that arise in their work situations at the counter.

5.4 The flexibility in the portioning as a contribution to the university restaurant project design

The results of the systematic observation at the counter revealed the variability of the population attending the restaurant. The need to change the fixed portioning demonstrated that the view of an “average student” profile does not match the actual restaurant users’ profile.

In this context, the UR director and team of nutritionists decided to change the concept of fixed portioning, based on the view of an “average student”, into a more flexible portioning. The more flexible portioning gave to the kitchen assistants’ some autonomy at the counter. The new concept allowed the kitchen assistants to increase or reduce the amount of ingredients by about 15%, depending on the users’ private orders, thus reducing the lack or surplus of ingredients. The UR team decided that, to improve the quality of the service in this operation model, the kitchen assistants could change the speed in serving the users’ line, if necessary. They could now “look” and “wait for” the customers’ reaction and ask what they would like, not serving one or another less desired ingredient of the menu.

With these changes, supervision at the counter became less strict. The workers gained greater flexibility [space for maneuver] during their contact with the UR users, particularly at the time of making local decisions such as making changes to the fixed portioning. And they even developed friendship bonds with some of the UR users in their almost daily contacts at the counter, which favored the creation of a friendly atmosphere between the people on both sides of the counter, thus getting the workers more satisfied with the result of their work.

Therefore, the kitchen assistants contributed significantly to transforming the project’s concept of “fixed portioning” and to improving the performance of the work system (as benefits: raw material waste was reduced; serving quality improved; the students’ satisfaction increased).

5.5 Construction of the interface based on the activity analysis

The EWA allowed us to demonstrate that the model adopted at the UR dining areas prioritized the UR team’s objectives, that is, to promote food culture, to meet the requirements of food security and nutrition and production, amongst others. In actual situations when working at the food distribution counter, exercising the main concepts of this model created various difficulties to kitchen assistants, especially during the distribution of the fixed portioning.

In actual situations, exercising of main concepts of this model created various difficulties to kitchen workers, especially during the distribution of the fixed portioning.

According Guérin et al., [4], during the EWA, an activity should be described by the classic ergonomic observables such as: body posture, the communication exchange, the products and tools being used or manipulated, the way they do things, the way they move around in the area [displacements], the documents they use, the controls they are subjected to or should execute etc. In our study the privileged observables were: communication (interaction of kitchen assistants with customers, supervisors and nutritionists), the line size, the average service time, and the difference between the number of meals planned and the number of students attended).

Then, this description is used as the basis to conduct self-confrontations and verbalization [explanations] with workers.

In the study case, the interviews [self-confrontation] aimed at understanding why the kitchen assistants do what they do and why they created such strategies, how they use their operative modes and how they use their skills [tacit and explicit knowledge]. This is associated in an interface: activity description and the worker’s verbalizations, which allows for understanding the “Whys”, in other words, the invisible work turns visible. The “Whys” or, in other words, the “detailed answers”, the “detailed explanations” that were given by the workers that were analyzed, led the researcher to understand the existing interpersonal conflicts; the high level of turnover; the problems related to the quality of care etc.

This representation of the activity should be one of the central competencies of the ergonomist. This is a real question - the construction of this interface - it is a central and decisive stage of activity analysis. This description, which allows the researcher to have the verbalizations [What do you observe? What is this?] - this description is the representation of this interface, which is nothing more than the representation of the activity, this is a fundamental step for the ergonomic analysis of the work.

In these debates, the results of the previous analysis (EWA) [4] of the kitchen assistants’ work served as base information [a frontier of knowledge], a kind of dialogical support, among the different actors involved in such meetings, to comprehend and to discuss their own points of view. In other words, the activity revealed was transformed into a dialogical interface that allowed for the different participants involved to comprehend the existence of their different logics and conflicts. Through this interface, actors can debate and explain existing contradictions and to propose the ideas for the improvement of the UR’s catering system.

The main topics discussed therein were related to (i) the issues concerning the process that introduces the new operation control system in the UR, which had just been implemented at the different dining areas in the UR; (ii) the existing activity challenges; (iii) the possible transformation of the work system, and (iv) improvement of the catering system.

This interface development in the UR project meetings allowed for all the participants involved to construct the transformations of the project’s initial concepts. Thus, the UR team first started to conduct a series of analyzes to understand some characteristics of the current consumption of meals, like (i) the quality of preparation, (ii) the leftovers and (iii) acceptability of the different ingredients. In terms of changes to the system, the fixed portioning was made more flexible. In addition, the UR director and nutritionists decided to start a series of researches about the best ways to carry out the portioning. Thus, a quantitative research aimed at collecting information to characterize the variation of quality and quantity of consumption of the different foods at the restaurant’s three units. The elements considered were the student’s gender, behavioral aspects (example: rejection of pork due to religious reasons), the variety of recipes in the menu, the visual presentation of the tray being served, preference or rejection of some foods (example: “dulce de leche” (milk fudge) and pumpkin preserve, respectively).

The role and effects of the interface construction allowed for the confrontation of different points of views with the logic of the activity. The interface took on a transversal character, which established a process of mutual learning. The new knowledge was brought from the field, coming and going between different hierarchic and organizational levels. The kitchen assistants had the chance to bring to the meetings the logics of the UR users and verbalize their complaints and suggestions to the managers and nutritionists of both teams. The workers themselves played an intermediation role between those responsible for developing the UR’s catering system model and the UR end users. Thus, the managing team and the UR’s project team had the possibility of continuous feedback from the field about the results of their work of design and management of the UR’s catering system. During these discussions, it was decided to review the menu: to change the preparation techniques and even the recipes for some ingredients to increase their acceptability.

After being given greater autonomy at the counter, based on the new more flexible portioning, the chores became more flexible and the kitchen assistants less anxious and more confident at the moment of making the decision to change the measure of the fixed portioning. These workers commented that their level of conflicts, tension and fatigue at the counter was reduced.

6 Discussion

As a possible contribution to the development of the studies of participatory methods, in particular, intervention and integration of ergonomists in the projects, this article presented the concepts of work activity, the interface and the logics of the project. The concept of activity is key in the ergonomic approach and structures the methodological development of this approach [1]. By analyzing the activity, the different logics that outline the work situation design are identified. The activity revealed by the ergonomic intervention is presented herein as a dialogical interface analogous to the social interface described by Norman Long. This activity, when debated by the actors in a project, constitutes a support to improve the working conditions.

The social nature of this interface allowed the ergonomist to establish a dialog among the different logics in an organization. Development thereof opens spaces in a meeting that support everyone involved in expressing, confronting and articulating their differences. By exchanging information about the revealed activity, the interface became a basis of knowledge and a mutual learning process about the actual work situations, which supported the interaction of the participants, mainly those responsible for the system’s operation. The objective of this construction is to transform potential conflict situations into opportunities, opening and expanding the space for debate within the organizations.

This way, everyone involved in the process of the UR project had the opportunity to learn the logics of the other professional groups and, by confronting their different points of view, to learn collectively and reassess the project’s initial concepts, thus seeking together (i) to reduce the negative consequences of the performance of the activities, (ii) to improve working conditions, (iii) to preserve the workers’ health, (iv) as well as to improve the company’s performance.

The results of the kitchen assistants’ activity analysis during the distribution of the meals transported at the UR dining area revealed several inconsistencies in the project (example: conflict between fixed offer and variable demand; average student profile and fixed portioning not matching the UR customers’ variable profile). Systematic analysis at the serving counter allowed for identifying the different logics and resulting conflicts thereof, which affected the workers’ activities and reorganized them during the portioning of the menu ingredients at the serving counter.

This study has some limitations. The late ergonomic intervention in the project reduced the possibilities of transformation of the food system that was implemented. Besides, the transformations introduced in the system have always required constant adjustments that had to be monitored and debated amongst managers (directors), operators (kitchen workers), and designers (nutritionists). Future research could deepen the study on how, under these conditions, ergonomists could expand the scope of action [35] of the project’s operators, particularly in the initial stages of design. The design process, like any other act of projecting, has a social cooperative dimension [36, 37]. Since no one can have all the representations of the existing problems and the competences to solve them [2], decision-making goes through constant negotiation among the different participants involved [38].

7 Conclusion

The development of interface during the project meetings, based on the kitchen assistants’ activity analysis at the counter, provided an information basis from the viewpoint of the activity and of these workers’ participation.

On this basis, those responsible for the design of this project’s catering system managed to: (i) change their view about the existing activities; (ii) learn about the different logics in the project; (iii) reveal their own limits and those of others; (iv) articulate and confront the different logics involved and look for solutions for their conflicts; (v) obtain an integrated view of the design process; (vi) reach an alignment of the (workers’) activity logic with the logics of the other actors involved in the project; (vii) lead to reflections on possible future transformations of the project’s initial concepts.

It may be said that, similarly to a physical interface, the interface based on the activity analysis works as a device that provides an interaction among the several elements, parts and logics of a system, which could not be directly connected. It is about confronting the knowledge of those acting on a daily basis with those whose work is to anticipate the actions through their universal knowledge. The interface allowed for the construction of more complete representations of the project’s context and the opening of spaces that helped to establish a basis of mutual learning. This basis expanded the workers’ scope of action about the project and helped to better consider the technical choices and their consequences for the project.

Conflict of interest

None to report.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

This article has benefitted from resources provided by the French-Brazilian project Capes-Cofecub 702/11 “Work, Innovation and Sustainable Development”.

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