Quality and Systems Management in McDonalds

bore and Systems Management in McDonaldsMcDonalds, as we both chouse is the worlds mammothst chain of tight provender suppliers. The commerce began in 1940, with a blue eating house Bar B Que run by two brothers motherfucker and Mac McDonald in California. It was a drive way ministrationaurant which dod a limited menu of burgers, fries and so forth Mr. Ray Kroc, a root cup and multi-mixer salesman got an order of multi-mixer from the McDonald brothers. He was impressed by the go downment of the restaurant and came up with the idea of McDonalds Corporation, which was founded in 1955 by Mr. Ray Kroc.The first McDonalds was subject on April 15, 1955 in Illinois. By 1960, he bought the exclusive rights to the name McDonalds. And by 1965, t present were 700 restaurants throughout United States. It was the first time that McDonalds sh ares went public at $22.50 per share.McDonalds opened the first international restaurant in Canada in 1967. In 1974 McDonalds opened its first restaurant in the UK. Today, it has a chain of restaurants in 118 countries around the world. It celebrated its 50th anniversary on 15th April, 2005. ismMr. Kroc had the vision of creating a restaurant system, known for its unison and fiber of nourishment. To arrive at this, he needed his franchisees and suppliers to work with McDonalds and not for McDonalds. He promoted the slogan, In logical argument concern sector for yourself, alone not by yourself. He encouraged entrepreneurship as oftentimes as the commitment to his visions. This has led to the introduction of m each unsanded convergences into the come forth chain, most of which were the contri barelyions of franchisees.If I had a brick for every time Ive repeated the enounce role, Service, Cleanliness and Value, I think Id probably be fit to bridge the Atlantic Ocean with them. -Ray Kroc. This very well illustrates the signifi scum bagce of these four aspects in the excellent execution of the restaurant dish outs at McDonalds. The gauge and cleanliness is unparalleled.But, what is unique in this restaurant chain that has travelled past 50 long time and emerged as a market place involveer and promises to continue the same. vocation ModelMcDonalds task runs on 3 pillarsThe suppliersThe franchiseesThe McDonalds corporation itselfThe business model that the organization costs is Franchisee Model. The gild provides training to the prospective franchisees and operators regarding the ways a McDonalds is run. There is a inquiry and breeding Lab that provides facilities for all trainees to experiment in cooking. McDonalds as a company owns simply 15% of the restaurants. The remaining 85% are taken veneration by the franchisees. There are stringent policies of monitor lizarding the franchisees to check that they are adhering to the McDonalds promises of Quality, Cleanliness, Service and Value offered to its nodes.The Product Consistency across all the outlets is guaranteed by a supplier networked operation and distribution system. This has resulted in consistency not only across the restaurants in a region but world tolerant.The brand building mechanism of McDonalds is not to allow for the needs of the stream market demand, but in addition ensures the brand assess in years to come. The organization ensures that the promises to the nodes are not compromised which ensures repeat business.operations ManagementIt is considered to be the concern of an organization capable of transforming an stimulant to out correct. This transformation is performed by adjacent a particular subroutine. The transformation tail end be applied to diverse categories based on the nature of the business. The three main categories creation clobbers, nodes and information. about of the organizations rely on a combination of these.However, in this particular example, the input is the untoughened materials going into the making of any of the eatables in the restaurant. The dish out is the variation of these products to deliverables. These put to workes are repetitive throughout the organization except for the minor changes resulting collectible to an introduction of a new recipe which, at a ulterior point of time, become repetitive. The output is the finished eatable that is been supplied to an determination user, here the customer.Strategies of Operations ManagementOperations attention plays a very real role in the building up of any organization. The Operations, when put into crop, service the organization strive its fundamental goals. It is well established by the Potters value chain model.Value is the amount the byers are willing to pay for what an organization provides them . . . creating value for buyers that exceeds the cost of doing so is the goal of any generic strategy. Value, quite of cost, must be used in analyzing the free-enterprise(a) position. . . Potter M. (1985) harmonise to Potters analysis, the value chains consi st of basically two activities, viz. basal activities and support activities.The Primary activities are Inbound LogisticsOperationsOutbound Logistics market and SalesServiceThe Support activities are ProcurementTechnology and armmentHuman Resource ManagementOrganization InfrastructureFurther, the operations caution is not constrained to value addition task alone. It is a serve of Planning, Organizing and entertainling of the operations to ensure that the customer blessedness is achieved.Planning and goPlanning is the major step in Operations management. Planning helps serve many another(prenominal) objectives that can contribute to the profit of an organization. Proper mean helps shrink the cost of the production. This is achieved because right measures are taken to ensure handiness of raw materials at reasonable cost even in bleak periods, thus avoiding a stall in the production scenario. More everyplace, proper planning in addition takes care of measures to avoid exc ess production. There is a better supremacy of the immediate payment flow, which can be the expenses incurred and future investment of the profit earned.Moreover, the planning strategies will also help make proper use of on tap(predicate) resources, raw materials as well as military personnel resources. It also mitigates the causes of dissatisfaction among the employees at times of un pass judgment workload and among the customers at times of unexpected handle in the services. some(prenominal) organization would perform to the best of its abilities when the planning is proper and the plans are put into action as well as fulfill control systems are enforced to make sure that the system is tally as per the planned schedule. The control can be go throughed by system or manually monitored by people. It does not matter as long as the processes are being followed without fail.The process is monitored meticulously and the reports are created for every output spring upd. In the fou ntain of our example, the reports would be the profit and the customer feedbacks obtained. These reports are analyzed to detect the deviation from the expected issue. If the deviations are trivial, strict measures are taken at the franchisee level. If the deviations are operative, corrective measures are bodied at an organizational level.The challenge for abstain diet joints akin McDonalds in structuring their strategies are better ways to provide variety of end products to the consumers in large quantities, at the same time maintaining the persona and value of the product and keeping it cost effective.Performance MeasuresSince the fast feed joint McDonalds has a world(prenominal) presence, the competitive priorities can be analyzed on the following parameters.CostQualityDelivery tractabilityServiceCost some(prenominal) customer of a fast solid food joint has respective(a) options to looking at from. This leads to tuff competition for an organization. The cost is s ometimes the major factor influencing a customer choice. The customer in most cases wont be able to distinguish the difference in the cost of the commodities put together to produce the end product. So, the organization needs to make sure that the cost of the end product is lucrative for any prospective customer.Quality The product pure tone also plays a significant role in customer satisfaction. rugged cost ensures initial customer flow, but low cost put together with superior woodland ensures repeat business. The property of product is an contact of the quality in process. The process quality is significant as it takes care of delivering product to the customers worldwide having a uniform experiment and quality. This is very Copernican for fast food joints as their taste is expected by the customers at various geographic locations to be same.Delivery Another major significant priority is the speed of saving. Most of the customers going to a fast food joint are expecte d to be short on time. Hence, they would opt places which have the fastest customer service even at degree load times, like lunch time. But even with the best processes in place, there can be delays due to unanticipated circumstances. McDonalds has schemes in place to avoid customer dissatisfaction on such uncommon situations. They offer the legitimate items for free in case of delay beyond a door time. Some joints provide additional items free of cost too.Flexibility Flexibility can be the variety of products provided to the customer. Since during a peak time, there would be far too many customers ordering a variety of items, the leave chain is well organized to cater to the bringment of each and every customer in the least time possible. Moreover, it also requires the organization to fit to the changing demands of the customers, which may vary based on basically the geographic locations. McDonalds is dominantly a fast food joint which specializes in beef and pork varietie s, but they have a wide reaching of menu for the Asiatic customers, where vegetarian and chicken recipes are more in demand.Service Since fast food joints are a service oriented fabrication where in business depends not only on the above mentioned factors, but to a large extend on the customer interaction. The customer service employees, who are accountable for interacting with the customers while taking orders and delivering them, undergo a proper training in the first place being assigned the job. This gives an advantage over the competitors as customers tend to cull joints having better customer services.Along with all of these strategies, the competitive nature of the global fast food market requires the organization to keep on innovating new products to lure various ranges of customers. McDonalds has in place various product packages that cater to the needs of customers of various age groups. The ranges embarrass the inclusion of HappyMeal option for kids which allo w toys from the latest animation movies along with food for the kids.QualityCustomer satisfaction is the key to success for any fast food joint. correspond to David Garvin of Harvard Business School, quality is defined as transcendent, product based, user based, manufacturing based or value based .Based on these five definitions, Garvin(1984) compiled together eight quality dimensions which are as follows .PerformanceFeaturesReliabilityConformanceDurability usablenessAestheticsPerceived QualityWith respect to our example of fast food joint McDonalds, only a few of these are significant. They are as follows Conformance This is one of the major concerns of a product developed by any organization that it should conform to some pre defined standards that are expected for that particular range of product. The fast food joints are expected to conform to the food quality norms and alimental value.Performance Performance is the measure of how cost-efficient a product is to per form its intended purpose. In case of fast food, the objective is to relieve a customer of hunger and provide the requisite nutrition to the body. The better the military operation of a food item in this respect, the more is the demand for that particular item.Features These are the additions to the product that can rise its feat. The addition of accessories in electronic equipment can enhance its mathematical operation. Similarly, fast food joints provide a wide range of additional products like squishy toasts, sweets, coffee etc. along with the burgers which fetch more revenue as well as result in the increased service quality and exploit. Some of the food packages include additional items like toys etc. that hike result in rich features.Reliability Reliability is the property of achieving customer trust. A customer should be able to rely on a product for its consistency across various geographic locations. This is crucial for fast food joints as a person travelling to an unknown place around the globe would be more tempted to walk in to a familiar food joint and hence would expect the same taste and quality that he is used to in his own country or region. This leads to an increase in global business by catering to unshakable customers.Aesthetics It is the biggest concern for any organization dealing with food and drink market. Its the subjective sensory characteristic. There are a lot of competitors in a fast food business. The customers along with the nutrition and value for coin also care for the aesthetic value of the delivered products. These may be the taste, look and feel etc. This may also be the ambience in the fast food joint. The customer prefers a place where he finds a good combination of all the above concerns. A very nutritious burger in a shabby wrapping wont be hot among the customers on the contrary vice versa can be a market leader.The Sand Cone ModelCost EfficiencySpeed dependablenessQualityAn Operations Management Co mpetence ModelSlack et al (2008)Quality improvement methodologiesImproving the product quality is an evolving process in any business organization irrespective of the domain or range of product it deals with. A variety of norms and paradigms are in place to monitor the Quality improvement processes.Total Quality Control (TQC)Total Control Quality is the philosophy of continual improvement in the quality. Its based on the adherence to the 5 Ss that are a sequential process that organizations follow to ensure that result in high quality processes and in pervert high quality products. According to Ramasamy(2005) The 5 Ss areSeiri This is the organization by getting rid of unnecessary items. These may include a wide range of objects. The cleaning up of the sr. files and records in one of them. The old machineries which no longer give optimal results can be remove or replaced with new one. The machineries may include cutting instruments, baking ovens etc. The constraint for re misera ble the machineries and tools is the once that have been unused for past 2 3 years. However, the organization can override these constraints based on their domain and requirements.Seiton Its the cleanliness as a result of performing a Seiri. In case of a fast food joint, keeping the area neat is extremely important as it concerns not only the aesthetics but also hale issues of prospective customers. Food outlets need to be well cleaned and maintained so.Seiso The equipment and graft where the production happens should be clean to avoid dirt and resultant wispy problems. In case of fast food joints, the plants where the raw materials for making the food items, the farms from where the vegetables and poultry are being used etc. must be scrutinized to make sure that there is no compromise on the quality of the products used. Moreover, the kitchen in which the food is made should be cleaned. The food items should not at any point of time be touched by scanty hands unless it rea ches the customer. all told these ensure that the food is safe and free from any germs or disease carriers.Seiketsu Standardizing the locations of all the items is another way of enhancing quality. The places of raw material in the kitchen needs to be standardized in order to assist fast assembling of various items and hence reduce the time of delivery. Moreover, the cash counter has a well-organized cash box which facilitates easy and faster minutes as it becomes easier for the employees to return the change to the customers.Shetsuke It is the disciplined way in which the above four Ss are implemented and adhered to in any organizations. This doesnt only include the management to take care of the enforcement of these rules. The responsibility lies with each and every employee be actively collectd in ensuring that the quality processes are followed.The three universal joint Processes of Managing for QualityTHE JURAN TRIOLOGY DIAGRAMQuality PlanningQuality ControlQuality Impro vementDetermine who are the customersEvaluate positive product carrying into actionEstablish the infrastructureDetermine the needs of the customerCompare actual performance to product goalsIdentify the improvement projectsDevelop product features that react to customers needsAct on the differenceEstablish project teamsDevelop process able to produce the product featuresProvide the teams with resources, training and penury to Diagnose the causeStimulate RemediesEstablish controls to hold the gainsTransfer the plans to the direct forceCopyright 1989 by Juran Institute IncThere are many standards in place to ensure that Quality norms are followed. But, these policies seem bootless unless there is proper and timely audit for the same. The Quality audit processes would require a team of quality experts to evaluate each and every process for its quality. The above table gives an overview of all the quality planning, control and improvement strategies.According to Summers (2009), th e various standards and criteria that exist globally to support effective quality management systems areISO 9000 International Organization for Standardization has representatives from the national standardization bodies of over 90 countries. The main objective is to satisfy customer by quality assurance and increase the level of confidence of a customer in an organization. A company can audit itself to gain this particular inner(a) certification. The customers can audit an organization against the set of standards for second party certification.ISO 14000 This is an citation of ISO Standards regarding environmental issues. The organizations are evaluated for environment protection and pollution prevention. These are followed by organizations to reduce negative impact on the environment. The organizations can implement various strategies to achieve this. Like, providing bio degradable wrappers and glasses instead of using plastics.SIX SIGMA The goal of this process is to reduc e the process variation to the point where there are only 3.4 defects per million opportunities. This is especially significant for industries whose business involves mass production.Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBQNA) This is another evaluation process which was designed by consulting often of experts. The main evaluation dimensions areThe soundness of the system.The deployment of the system across the organization.The outcome of the deployment.Organizational PerformanceIf you dont drive your business, you would be driven out of business. B. C. Forbes.This is the basic principle of business in todays world. The business world is very competitive and doesnt leave room for compromise on any of the aspects of business, be it, Quantity, Quality, Operations Management, Process Management etc. The responsibility of a successful business lies with each and every employee, as was the theory of Ray Kroc, which led him to implement the franchisee business model.But, implementin g alone would not ensure adherence. Adherence can be assured only when measured. Measures literally mean dimensions or capacity of anything. For an organization, the performance has to be measured as well as recognized and rewarded. The performance can be measured for employees, processes, services, suppliers etc. Any parameter that plays a significant part of the organization needs to be measured against certain(p) standards to ensure quality.Measures of good performanceThe performance of the processes in place can be measured on the basis of certain parameters like expenses, income, quality, throughput, delivery time, safety, cleanliness etc. In a fast food joint like McDonalds, the service time to the customer is a major concern. This can be ensured only if the production time for the food in the kitchen is well defined. Any delay in the production time would delay delivery to the customer hence violating the standards. So, standard time constraints need to be put in place. More over, the cleanliness is important as its a matter of hygiene. The quality of food depends a lot on the incoming raw materials like flour, vegetables, fruits, poultry, oils used etc. All these have to be of superior quality for the proper works of the organization.The organizational results performance measures are concentrate on the strategic interests of the organization. The results involve both the organization and customers equally. The customer satisfaction is one of the measures, which can be measured by the amount of repeat business and the number of customers per day. All satisfied customers tend to recommend the organization to their friends hence increasing the business. The performance measure with respect to the organization can be based on its annual financial results, quarterly financial results, deviation of these results from the predicted results, the profits etc. The organizational performance can be measured also by the brand value generated by the organization. The measures discussed so far were materialistic, but its the human resources that make a service oriented organization like McDonalds achieve its objectives. There are measures to monitor the readiness and performance of these human resources. This can be done yearly or half yearly in the form of appraisals. The employees can be rated based on performance. The excellent performers should be rewarded to encourage them to keep up the work and also motivate the rest of the employees to perform better. The extremely poor performers should be given proper mentoring to help them perform better.The internal process measures are meant to measure the effectiveness and efficiency of the plans and processes that are incorporated inside the organization. The Learning and Growth measures are focused on the growth and well being of the human resource i.e. the employees. It also encourages innovations, in case of McDonalds, the innovation of new recipes in the RD department by the franchisees. Financial measures are put in place to analyze the business progress of the organization world-wide in the context of the monetary gains or profits.These performance measures are used by the organization leaders to analyze and check up on the existing strategies, plans and processes, and make changes if necessary to improve the present conditions. The quality management systems and Six Sigma are used by organizations to ensure that the organization is moving towards progress in business by balancing the cost, quality and availability of products to the customer satisfaction.ConclusionFor any fast food joint, in this case McDonalds, to be a success, the first principle should be Customer is the King. A service oriented industry can flourish only by providing the best customer service in the least possible time. But, service is not the only factor. The quality of the products delivered must be hygienic and nutritious so as to serve their purposes. The competition is fast food indust ry is on an all time high, so the cost along with the quality would be a deciding factor for the customer.An organizations success doesnt rest in the managements hands. The responsibility lies with each and every employee and franchisee. The employee has to work for the organization as their own. The process of the organization has to be adhered to. This measure of these adherences and changes in the organizational strategies according to the requirements would lead to better business. The organizational leaders should not only Implement policies but also incorporate performance measure exercises to ensure that the processes are being adhered to.