[Certified Facility Introduction] Aloft Osaka Dojima: Optimizing Water Pressure and Nurturing "Multifaceted Champions" to Support a Lean Team Structure
1. Facility Overview
Located in the Dojima area of Osaka, "Aloft Osaka Dojima" features a playful and vibrant design. Despite being a select-service hotel operated by a lean, highly efficient team of approximately 60 employees, the property aims to raise environmental awareness among every single staff member and build an operational structure that remains sustainable 5 and 10 years into the future.
2. Good Practice
The hotel’s strengths lie in utilizing technical data and incorporating frontline perspectives into organizational management.
Precise Water Volume Adjustment Using Water Pressure Gauges: Initially, restricting the shower water volume uniformly across the board triggered secondary issues, such as a drop in toilet water pressure and unstable hot water temperatures at the washbasins. In preparation for their second-year renewal, the team collaborated with facility maintenance engineers to re-adjust the system using "water pressure gauges." By optimizing adjustments to match the actual structure of the water pipes, they successfully balanced water conservation with maintaining customer satisfaction (resolving the issues).
・3A Three-Person "Champion" System: To prevent the project from becoming a "silo" dependent on specific individuals, three designated members currently lead the initiatives. By including staff members who are well-versed in frontline operations as leaders, the hotel has established a system to swiftly capture improvements and effectively communicate environmental efforts to guests.
3. Challenges
The greatest and most continuous challenge is "unifying awareness across all 60 employees." The hotel daily explores ways to improve the quality of training and information sharing so that all staff members—not just a select group of representatives—can approach sustainability with the exact same level of passion.
4. Message
"In select-service hotels, a shared dilemma is how to tackle these initiatives efficiently and continuously with a limited number of people. We hope that by sharing our failures and solutions, we can grow together with other facilities facing similar challenges."
