SOA (Sandwich oriented architecture)

3 June 2006 by Rod McLaren

Subway’s promise is choice and health (or at least healthier than other fast food joints).

Their execution strategy has been to systematise their production line to the extent that it could offer a large range of choice – sandwich size, bread type, filling, toasted or not, salad topping, sauce topping, and so on – whilst still being scalable across a very large number of franchises, an operation which is still expanding quickly.

If all the bread is the same size and shape, and the fillings all come in pre-cooked and cut in standard-sized baggies, then you can optimise your ovens and your sandwich prep “workflow”, and perhaps more importantly you can optimise your delivery/logistics/inventory management, and your staff training.

There’s a parallel here to software development in which some elements are tightly controlled and standardised so that other elements can be left “loose” for the customer to make their choices. Within these constaints, you can have whatever you want. (Whether Subway’s “sandwich oriented architecture” offers a parallel to Service Oriented Architecture is left as an exercise for the reader!)

It’s clever because the operational model is adopted from fast-food pizza preparation, yet it still seems more like a more bespoke sandwich-deli experience.

I like the one with the meatballs.

*

Also: ‘There are more than two million different sandwich combinations available on the SUBWAY® menu’ and Subway article on Wikipedia).

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