COLLEGE OF GRADUATE STUDIES

PUTRAJAYA CAMPUS

SEMESTER 2 2019/2020

CASE STUDY: HOW TO MAKE THE BEST CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

OPERATION MANAGEMENT

MGTM623

PREPARED BY:

NAME ID. NO.

NOR ‘AINIL YAQQEN BINTI NOR AZIZ SB22959
NUR AQILAH BINTI ZAINAL SP22965
PUTERI ZAHARAH BINTI ZAINAL SB22846
NUR SYAKIRIN SULAMIN SB22937

PREPARED FOR: TS. ZUBAIDI FAIESAL BIN MOHAMAD RAFAAI

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 INTRODUCTION

Baking cookies at home or in a bigger scale takes a full measure steps from preparing
ingredients, mixing, baking, cooling and packaging. Indeed, it looks simple but there might be times
we overlooked the malfunction in the process. That is why we should have quality control inspections
throughout all the processes to make sure we can reduce delayed times, malfunctions of machineries
and have smooth productions that will increase customers’ satisfaction. Therefore, in this report we
would elaborate our steps in baking the best chewy chocolate chip cookies and identifying each
bottlenecks in the process. Other than that, this report would enlist different types of ideas in mitigating
the bottleneck processes and malfunctions that includes the use of Just-In-Time, Lean Six-Sigma and
innovation from the group members. Hence, the report contained well-detailed information that help
cookies production in a bigger scale in the future.

METHOD

STEPS TO MAKE CHEWY CHOCOLATE CHIPS COOKIES

START

Prepare the Ingredients:

1 cup of White Sugar B C* D E*
½ cup of Brown Sugar
Take a small
½ teaspoon of Salt
Mix the wet and quantity of cookie
1 ½ eggs Apply cooking
Preheat the oven dry ingredients to dough and roll
1 cup of Butter spray to the
to 180*C the mixing them into ball
2 ¼ Flour baking pan
machine shape using your
1 teaspoon Baking Soda
hands
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
2 tablespoons Milk
2 cups of Chocolate Chips
A

Take the cookies

Flatten each Place the cookie
Put the cookies out of the oven Bake cookies in
END cookie balls using balls on the
into the jar and let them sit on the oven
a fork baking pan
wire rack to cool

J I* H* G* F

Legend:
*: Bottleneck Process

Figure 1: Basic steps to make chewy chocolate chips cookies

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 ESTIMATED TIME CHART TO MAKE CHEWY CHOCOLATE CHIPS COOKIES

START

A B C* D E*
5 Minutes 10 Minutes 10 Minutes 1 Minute 20 Minutes

J I* H* G* F
10 Minutes 15 Minutes 10 Minutes 20 Minutes 5 Minutes

END

Total Estimated Time:

106 Minutes / 1 Hour 45 Minutes

Legend:
*: Bottleneck Process

Figure 2: Time Estimation of Individual Processes Flowchart

From the figures above, we identified bottleneck processes that we would like to improve to reduce
time consumption and resources wastage. Hence, the bottleneck processes are listed as below:

1. Mixing process.
2. Shaping process.
3. Flattening process.
4. Baking process.
5. Cooling process.

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After identifying the bottleneck processes, we come out with list of innovative ideas to mitigate the
problems and malfunctions, which are tabulated below:

No. Process Problem Ideas/ Solutions

Inaccurate Using the analog weight scale might be a problem of inaccurate

1 Preparing ingredient ingredient portion. To avoid this problem happen we change to
portion the digital weight scale to get more accurate scale.
Replacement of butter to palm oil will give a lot of advantages.
Palm oil is cheaper than butter, than it will cut the cost of
production. Other than that, palm oil has less fat compared to
2 Preparing Butter
butter. Besides, using butter will take a longer time to produce
a chewy and soft cookies compared to palm oil In a room
temperature.

Wastage of To avoid this problem. We use just in time (JIT) strategy which
3 Preparing
raw material is bake when receive the order from customer only

Normally, the last batch of the cookies will always short on the
Short on chocolate chips as much as the earlier batch. To prevent this to
4 Mixing chocolate happen, reserve some replacement morsels like raisins,
chips. chocolate chips and nuts and stir the morsels after half of the
dough has been scooped out.

Store the cookies in a zipper-lock bag with a not more than half
Chewy cookies
5 Cooling a slice of bread at a room temperature to prevent the cookies
dry quickly
from turning dry.

The cookies may not produce the intended mixture when they
Not having
are portioned not in the same size. Portion scoop can be used
6 Scooping standardize
to standardize the size of the cookies so it will look more neat
portion
well organized in the jar later.

This is a redundant process that need to take out from the

7 Flattening Flatten cookies process. This will decrease the time reducing. The cookies will
flatten themselves during baking process

Use baking sheet to prevent the burning or overbrowning in

When cookies
colour. Normally baking sheet are prone to be sticky and we
are keep
8 Baking can overcome this by using parchment paper while baking. Use
burning on the
it to line the baking sheet. Parchment paper is very versatile
bottom
since it is non-stick surface type of paper

9 Baking Burn cookies Turn into cookies crump

When the cookies are still slightly underdone, take the cookies
out from the oven. To ensure the texture is chewy, the cookies
Cookies are
10 Baking will droop over the end of a spatula. Besides, the cookies
not that chewy
should be in lightly browned other than the crevices must be
moist and the edge of the cookies should be smooth.

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 This means that the cookies are placed to close into another. To
avoid this, arrange the cookies in staggered rows. This is to
cookies run or
11 Baking ensure that there will be enough space between cookies. Bake
fuse together
in the alternate rows for example place four cookies in the first
row, three in the second row, four in the third row and so on.

We cannot expect that oven has even temperature all over the
space. Sometimes there are more heat at the bake side of the
Unevenly oven. The heat varies from top to bottom, front to back and side
12 Baking
baked to side. There is a probability that the cookies will unevenly
baked. The solution to this is to rotate the cookie sheet partway
through baking so that the back side faces front and vice versa.

We can easily tell when is the brown coloured cookies are done
but not with dark chocolate cookies since the colour of the
cookies is already dark like we cannot differentiate between the
dark chocolate
13 Baking burn colour. The way to make sure the dark chocolate cookies
cookies burn
is done baked is you need to press the middle of the cookie.
Most of the cookies are done when they leave a slight of
indentation.

It is a must to cool down the cookie sheets before place the raw
dough on it. If not, it can cause the cookies to spread and lead
to burn the edges. To speed up the cooling process, rinse the
14 Baking Burnt edges
sheet under the tap water. In addition, to avoid the burnt edges,
chill the dough for 10 to 15 minutes before portioning on the
cookie sheet. Soft dough can lead to the burnt.

In our process the baking temperature used is 180 degree

Celcius and the baking time is only 10 minutes. We can
improve this process by refer to the paper research by Saric et
al, 2014. Table below is the ideal baking temperature and time.

Temperature Cookie Temperature Time

15 Baking 1 170 10
and time
2 170 13
3 170 14
4 170 16
5 160 16
6 160 17
In the baking process, currently we are using only one oven
which is maximum capacity. It will increase time consuming
16 Baking Limited oven when we receive a lot of order. To maximize the quantity of
production and reduce the time consuming we need to add
oven.

Change to industrial oven which is bigger than normal oven

17 Baking Limited oven
and can fit almost ninety cookies in one time.

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 After baking, the crucial step is to cool down the cookies before
Leave cookies place the cookies into a jar. Instead of leave the cookies in the
18 Cooling in the oven too oven to cool down, remove the baking sheet out from the oven
long. and place them to a wire rack so that they will cool more
quickly before transfer the cookies into the jar.

In the packaging process, we can replace the jar with the zip-
19 Packaging Jar lock window paper bag. It will cut the cost since the paper bag
is cheaper than the jar.

Supervisory inspection is needed through all the process to

20 All process Quality control
reduce malfunctioning.

In order to avoid any failure in the future to produce more cookies, we come out with a control chart
as tabulated below:
Process/Steps Control Method

Assuring the acquiring of right

Receiving and material suits with the product
requirement with the right
Assembling of Raw First step on production is acquiring the amount needed to avoid wastes
Material. needed raw material. The material then and keeping the material at a
being gathered and stored and only being clean environment.
assemble when needed.

Assuring the right amount to be

Mixing Process. The steps on mixing all the ingredients
with the right procedures. Process
includes stirring, beating, blending,
binding, creaming, whipping and folding
until they become one product.
mix with the right steps and the
specific stirring time and mixing
speed. This includes the usage of
right mixing equipment's that
required.

Manual dough cutting and shaping

Dough Shaping.
The process of cutting and moulding the
finished dough into the desired shapes and
sizes suitable with the end product wanted.
have the tendency to be differ in
sizes due to human error. Thus,
the usage of right equipment's
should be considered to create a
same size dough.

Preparing the right equipment

Baking Process.
Can being considered as the last steps in
cookies making. With involvement of a
thermal process that uses an oven, which
transfers heat to the dough pieces to assures
that it is cooked.
needed, i.e.: suitable type of oven
with right temperature setting and
control to bake the cookies on its
right heat. Including controlling
the time needed on each baking.
6

Cooling Process.
The cooling process of the cookies before it
can then will be transferred into package.
Packaging Process.
The process of putting cookies in packs with
correct number or weight of product for sale.
Can be contained single in a pack, in a jumble,
single in a column, or side by side in a series of
short column or in another arrangement.
Inventory
Management or
Product Storage. Keeping the finished product in a good
condition before it can be dispatch out for
delivery to the end consumer.
Delivery and
Distribution.
The last step is to delivering and distributing
the product to the end consumer.
Clean surface and equipment to
place the cookies for cooling
process before it can then will be
transferred for packaging
process.
While using the right packaging
plays an important role, yet it is
crucial to assure a clean and
sanitize handling. This includes a
personal hygiene of the labour
which participate.
Controlling the environment and
the places which being used to
keep the final output before it
can send out to the final
consumer.
Setting an efficient distribution
system to assure effective time
consume to deliver each product
to the consumer. Also providing
a proper space for the product
and the right transportation
method.
7
We also revised our flowchart in making sure Standard Operating Procedures can be well translated in
each of the individual process as below:

REVISED FLOWCHART OF BAKING CHEWY CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

Prepare the Ingredients:

NO Mix the
1 cup of White Sugar
ingredients
½ cup of Brown Sugar
again
½ teaspoon of Salt
Mix the wet and
1 ½ eggs Does the cookie
Preheat the oven dry ingredients to
START 1 cup of Butter dough is in the right
to 180*C the mixing
2 ¼ Flour consistency?
machine
1 teaspoon Baking Soda Apply
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract cooking
2 tablespoons Milk YES spray to the
2 cups of Chocolate Chips baking pan

Take the cookies Using ice cream

Put parchment
Does the cookie out of the oven scoop, put the
Bake cookies in paper on top of
looks good? and let them sit on cookie balls to the
the oven the baking pan
wire rack to cool baking pan
NO YES

Crush them as Put the cookies Seal the

cookies crumbs into the ziplock packaging

Package them in a
END
ziplock

Figure 3: Revised flowchart

CONCLUSION

In a nutshell, we have learnt that the process of baking cookies is not as easy as it looks. In a
bigger scale, the chances of making a mistake, wastage of raw materials, and delayed time of processes
could affect the whole production system and will incurred a bigger cost that will leads higher losses to
the organization. It is true, production is the heart of profit-centre of the organization. As to past research
that had contributes tremendous of empirical studies that shown positive results of Lean Six Sigma,
Build-To-Order and Quality Control strategies. Thus, we embedded the strategies and we could see
quite number of changes in the flowchart and success rate of each individual process. From the Lean
Six Sigma strategy improves the cookies production process by reducing cost and time, Quality Control
helps to reduce waste management and Build-To-Order helps in making sure resources are sustainable
by using local ingredients, production, transport and storage. We also see that the strategies impacted
environment safety by changing the cookies packaging from plastic jars to zipper paper lock, not just
by reducing packaging time. For healthy life style concern, using palm oil to replace butter in cookies
can offer good textural properties to the cookies as provides a healthier choice. So, the customer will
have better option when choosing cookies as healthier snack. Hence, the ideation of improving the
bottlenecks would improve the quality of processes, customer’s satisfaction and profit-making
initiatives in the future.

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H., M. , & S. E, H. . (n.d.). Structural and functional properties of major ingredients of biscuit.
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Manley, D. (1998). Process control of baking and troubleshooting. Biscuit, Cookie and Cracker
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Saric, B., Nedeljkovic, N., Simurina, O., Pestoric, M., Kos, J., Mandic, A., … Misan, A. (2014). The
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10.5937/ffr1401039s

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