Mc Donald’s Operation Management Essay

Because we live in a muslim country, McDonald had to remove all the meals composed of porc, and use â€Å"Halal† meat. To convince the public opinion, they organize a trip for the press and the opinion leaders to their suppliers. There is an external independent audit who is responsible for the halal labeling. McD’s products are supplied by 50 % from local companies, the meat and the fries are imported from Egypt. When food arrive to the McD restaurant they are already labeled by a best-before date and are double labeled by the manager and then they are stored in the freezer in a temperature between – 18 ° and -23 °. The rule for the frozen food is that the first to come in is the first to come out. Health, safety and hygiene issues are taken seriously; the manager is responsible of the good following of the operations. In the kitchen, every employee is assigned a specific task, meat is bake between two heating plate that are cleaned every 30 minutes, after it’s done they use a special thermometer to make sure that the meat is at least 69  °, employees that are in contact with meat must wear gloves and change them regularly. There is also fried chicken and fish in the McDonald’s menu, so they use a deep fryer that is checked to make sure the oil is clean, fried food can’t stay out more than 20 minutes. Every hour there is a beep in the kitchen that indicate that employees have to wash their hands for 30 seconds and every 4 hours all the materials used in the kitchen are sterilize with a special spray. Finally when the meal is assembled, it is ready to be served to the consumer. Output : Meals Transformation process : *Baking *Assembling Input resources : *Materials *Staff *Food LowVolumeHigh. HighVarietyLow HighVariation Low HighVisibilityLow â€Å"â€Å" To understand the different types of operation we differentiate between them by using four dimensions – it calls these the four V’s of operations. They are, * Volume – how many products or services are made by the operation? * Variety – how many different types of products or services are made by the operation? * Variation – how much does the level of demand change over time? * Visibility – how much of the operation’s internal working are ‘exposed’ to its customers? †Ã¢â‚¬  From www. answer. com , search four Vs. The black curve in the diagram shows the McDonald’s operation tendencies. The volume of operations is mid-low which is high for a restaurant but McD is Fast-food restaurant, consumers during all days, however there are some peak hours, so the machinery are always working. An average McD stay open for 14 hours but they are some like the one in the corniche that stays open until 5 o’clock in the morning. The variety in McD product is mid-low, meal are standard, some stay always on the menu like the Cheeseburger or the Big Mac, but other are occasional like the Mac fondue or the Giabatta Grande. The meal are not really customizable like a real restaurant you can only ask them to remove an item from the meal like the salad or the tomato. Food is necessary, we need to consume it every day, we can’t base variation upon season but more upon hours. The peak hours for McDonald’s are between 12h and 15h and 19h to 21h30, during these moments we can’t really talk about fast-food anymore, you have to wait at least half an hour to place your order. However in the rest of the day you get served quickly but you will never find it empty. Visibility in McD is mid-low, we can partially see the employee cooking, it’s better than most restaurant however there are some sushi restaurant when the chef cook the food in front of you. In the western countries standard the price of McD is relatively low and is seen as a casual purchase however in morocco the price for the menu is high, an entire family can eat with the same price elsewhere. Some sees McD as an outing and eat there occasionally. Compared to other fast-food in the same segment like Burger King or KFC, the price is a little bit lower and the Cheeseburger is affordable to anyone. Dependability is important in McD, consumers want to be served at anytime, and McD reacted by making some of their restaurant open until 2 o’clock in the morning during the week-end and the McD in la Corniche is open every day until 5 o’clock in the morning because it is close to the night clubs and people leaving them are often starving. Flexibility in McD is a bit narrow, their menu isn’t as full and diversified as a real restaurant, they only offers burgers and they are not customizable, u can only remove items from it like the cheese or the tomato and it take them extra time. However in big cities like Casablanca or Marrakesh, they can be found everywhere, the only thing missing is the home delivery but they will have difficulties implementing it since a McD burger don’t last more than 10 minutes. They also propose flexibility in payment; consumers can pay with cash, credit card, cheque or restaurant ticket. Quality is a force that McD focus on in their marketing campaign; they try to associate healthy and fresh food with their brand. The taste of their burger is good however if you eat them too often you wouldn’t stand the taste anymore, that’s why they introduce new burgers once in a while. Speed is a core competency for McD since it’s a fast-food restaurant, once you place your order it doesn’t take long before you get served. But in peak hours or in McDrive, you have to wait a lot before arriving to the cashier sometimes more than 30 minutes. They tried to fix it by opening all the cashier and adding an extra employee that moves through the crowd and makes you a bill, however you still have to wait a lot. All operations managers manage processes, in fact almost all managers manage processes of some type. That is why process design is so important. It affects the day-to-day activities of everyone who is involved in a process. â€Å"â€Å"Process mapping simply involves describing processes in terms of how the activities within the process relate to each other. There are many techniques which can be used for process mapping (or process blueprinting, or process analysis, as it is sometimes called). However, all the techniques have two main features: 1. They identify the different types of activity that take place during the process; 2. They show the flow of materials or people or information through the process. †Ã¢â‚¬  Nigel, S. , Stuart, C. , Robert, J. , 2004. Operations Management. 4thed. Prentice Hall: Financial Times. P. 102. Cooking Storage Serving the consumer Frozen food The first symbol represents the transport of raw materials which is in this casa frozen food from the McDonald’s factory, when they arrive to the restaurant they are store in a freezer. Then there is the circle that represents the operations related to the cooking and finally there is the trapezium which represents the output of the processes that is the client being served. The layout is the configuration of work centers, departments and equipment, with particular emphasis on movement of work through the system. â€Å"â€Å"A cell layout is one where the transformed resources entering the operation are preselected( or preselect themselves) to move to one part of the operation (or cell) in which all the transforming resources, to meet their immediate processing needs, are located. After being processed in the cell, the transformed resources may go on to another cell. †Ã¢â‚¬  Nigel, S. , Stuart, C. , Robert, J. , 2004. Operations Management. 4thed. Prentice Hall: Financial Times. P. 210 – 211. The layout in McD’s restaurants are well studied to maximize the place in the kitchen, there is little place between machinery. Since they offer different kind of meals and needs different equipment to prepare them, the cell layout was the best alternative for them. We can take for example and order of a Big Mac and a pack of Nuggets, after the frozen meat and the chicken are token out of freezer, the meat is baked between two heating plate and the chicken is fried. When they are ready, the meat is given to another employee who is responsible of assembling the burgers and then they are both transferred to an employee who packs them up. Finally, the French fries are fried ( they are often near the cashier) and everything is ready to be served to the consumer. Let’s start by comparing the cost, the price of a menu in McD is in between 47 dhs to 61 dhs and 12 dhs for a Cheeseburger whereas in Burger king the price of a menu is in between 55 and 66 dhs and 13 dhs. The gap in prices in morocco is certainly due to the fact that McD is operating on a broader scale ( 29 restaurants) than Burger King who only have one franchise in the Morocco Mall and has started less than a year ago, so the economy of scale allow McD to a lower cost per unit produced then his rival. McD have opened restaurant all over Morocco and they extend the time of closure until 5 o’clock in the morning for some of its restaurants, whereas Burger King have only one restaurant that is a bit far from the city and is located in a mall which brings a lot of people in it, and they don’t have a similar service as McDrive. Their performance in flexibility is a bit similar, consumers can’t customize their meals however Burger King offer a wider variety of meals than McD. Maybe my judgment might be biased since I’ve been eat in McD for years but the quality of the bread and meat in Burger King is way better, even their fries are more crispy. One of the order-winner for Burger King is the speed, there is a place where you command and a place where you get served which is a real gain in time for consumers, because in McD you have to wait until the client in front of you get served to place your order. McDonald’s have several order-winner factors which are: * Trust: Since it’s a big company they can’t afford to lose their reputation by manipulating food and bad hygiene, so whenever you travel you first option to eat is McD. * Quality: They select the best ingredients and create different sauces to meet customers’ needs best, they offer different meal according to the country they operate in. We can take for example the Big Tasty, at first it was just a seasonal meal they offer but it fits Moroccan taste better than other meals because of its mechwi taste, and now it became a permanent meal on the menu. * Location: with 29 restaurants over 15 cities in Morocco, they can be found everywhere Order qualifying factors are: * Speed: Most of the time, it doesn’t take more than 4 minutes between placing the order and receiving the products. However in peak hours, you can wait more than 30 minutes to get served * Disponibility of Staff: They use shift to make sure there is enough employees to make the business work, however customers don’t pay attention to this detail. â€Å"â€Å"Mass services have many customer transactions, involving limited contact time and little customization. Such services are often predominantly equipment-based and ‘product’ oriented, with most value added in the back office and relatively little judgment applied by front-office staff. † Nigel, S. , Stuart, C. , Robert, J. , 2004. Operations Management. 4thed. Prentice Hall: Financial Times. P. 117. This type of process design defines best McD operations, using a product oriented menu that allow little customization, they produce a high volume of meals with a restrict variety. The contact time with clients is low because it’s a fast-food and the entire added value comes from the kitchen and the marketing department. McDonald’s is using standardization for their operations because most of its employees are not going to stay for long period, most of them are student taking part time jobs. When they first enroll, employees start by watching a video about food safety, then they go to the kitchen where steps for each process are indicated in front of every machine. They never start alone, there is always a coworker helping him assimilate all the safety rules to manipulate the machines. In the McD factory they use modularity to create new meals and sauces by combining different food to meet customer’s needs. According to Wikipedia, in 2004 Morgan Spurlock filmed a documentary called Super Size Me where he ate only in McDonalds for a 30-day. The film documents this lifestyle’s drastic effect on Spurlock’s physical and psychological well-being, and explores the fast food industry’s corporate influence, including how it encourages poor nutrition for its own profit. As a result, he gained 11. 1 kg, a 13 % body mass increase, a cholesterol level of 230, and experienced mood swings, sexual dysfunction, and fat accumulation in his liver. Six weeks after the film premiered, McDonald’s announced that it was eliminating the super size option, and was creating the adult happy meal. In my opinion McD should advertise more about biologic vegetables and indicate how much calories our body can handle per day. They should also influence customers to exercise more.