Quality and Improving Operations
McDonalds Corporation is the leading fast-food restaurant across the globe. Since inception the company has experienced tremendous growth and profitability due to its adoption of sound business philosophies and practices. McDonalds has become a symbol of globalization given its successful expansion to various parts of the globe. The other factor that has contributed to McDonalds’ success and profitability worldwide is its effective operation function. The company has streamlined its operation function from obtaining raw materials to production to distribution of food items/products to its customers. McDonalds Corporation has established a relatively effective operations management framework that helps in handling all its functional areas. In relation to the Operations Management framework, this paper examines quality and improvement of operations at McDonalds Corporation.

Part 1 – Quality and Conformance

McDonalds Corporation operates in an increasingly competitive fast-food industry across the globe. Despite its market share and position, this company still faces stiff competition from other rivals in the market. Throughout its operations, McDonalds Corporation focuses on excellent customer service, response to competition, and utilizing suitable techniques to enhance growth and development (Keller, 2017). As part of providing excellent customer service and ensuring customer satisfaction, McDonalds emphasizes quality as part of its operations management framework. The company’s operations management framework is established on the premise of ensuring quality in all functional areas.

Philosophy on Quality

As previously indicated, McDonalds’ operations management is centered on an emphasis on quality. To this extent, McDonalds has a clear statement on quality, which is incorporated into its activities. In addition, the company utilizes an effective quality system that enhances the efficiency and effectiveness of its functional areas. According to Ka-Singh (2019), McDonalds’ philosophy statement on quality is to provide high-quality food and excellent customer service to all customers in a clean and welcoming environment at great value. The company’s philosophy on quality is based on the principle of QSCV, which also acts as customer service philosophy. Quality, Service, Cleanness, Value (QSCV) is McDonalds clear statement on quality and the principle of customer service. Under quality, the company focuses on accurate selection of raw materials for its food items. In relation to service, McDonalds focuses on promoting quick, attentive and friendly service that leads to 100% customer satisfaction. The company also seek to provide its services in clean stores and utilize customers’ needs and demands as the premise for product development initiatives.

McDonalds ensure that this philosophy is incorporated into its business activities through including it in customer service efforts. McDonalds philosophy on quality is the core of customer service standards and business activities carried out in the company. In this regard, the company has established a system for obtaining customers’ requests in a timely manner and meeting these requests in a fast, attentive and friendly manner (Hu & Xie, 2013). In addition, the company has ensured incorporation of this philosophy in all activities by using it as the foundation for its supply chain and value proposition strategy. McDonalds Corporation also formulates all its yearly strategic plans based on this philosophy of quality and customer service (Ka-Sing, 2019). Through incorporating the philosophy in the annual strategic plans, McDonalds ensures that all its activities reflect the emphasis on quality. To ensure the incorporation of this philosophy on quality in all business activities, McDonalds utilizes Total Quality Management (TQM) system. Using TQM, all McDonalds’ restaurants or fast-food outlets have responsibility for ensuring quality as employees are empowered and given the responsibility of ensuring quality in all operations. Additionally, the company utilizes this system to carry out continuous product improvement and quality customer service based on combination of customers’ needs and wants.

Management of Quality

The management of quality at McDonalds is the responsibility quality control and quality assurance departments. These departments comprises individuals from cross-functional departments, especially product/service development department. Quality control and quality assurance departments at the company are mandated with the responsibility of conducting proper quality control and assurance assessments. Insights derived from these assessments is utilized to shape product development initiatives toward the production of high-quality products. To carry out their responsibility in an efficient and effective manner, the quality control and quality assessment departments utilize Quality Inspection Program (QIP). Through this program, these departments ensure that all products are in perfect condition. Some of the metrics utilized in the quality inspection and control process include nutritional value and freshness of the raw materials/food items.

According to Nanyang Consultancy (2016), quality...…and the organization. In light of the current situation facing the company in terms of its profitability and success, McDonalds need to improve the quality of its products and customer service. The improvement of the quality of products would help address the food safety concerns that have characterized its operations and contributed to poor reputation and global comparable sales. In this regard, McDonalds can either utilize incremental improvements or breakthrough improvements to enhance the quality of its food products or items.

The use of incremental improvements approach would entail identifying areas in food production processes that require changes. This approach would impact operations by generating changes in food production processes. The company will need to identify measures that can be implemented to enhance the quality of food products and ensure the implementation of these measures across all operations. Small tweaks using incremental improvements would have positive impacts on operations since they would not require large resources or generate major changes in current operations. Therefore, employees will find it easy to implement these small tweaks while the organization will incur minimal costs in executing the changes.

On the other hand, breakthrough improvements have significant impact on operations and the organization given the resources required to implement them. The major impact of this approach on operations is major improvements in key business areas. The use of this approach would entail making holistic changes to current food production processes. Breakthrough improvements would affect the organization by generating additional demands on the workforce as large resources and changes are made within a short period of time (Crom, n.d.). Holistic changes in the production processes would be complex to implement within a short time.

In conclusion, operations and operations management are critical toward the success of any business organization. McDonalds Corporation has experienced tremendous success and profitability over the years through suitable operations management framework. However, the company has experienced challenges in recent years because of the decrease in global comparable sales. In this regard, McDonalds Corporation needs to adopt suitable measures for improving operations. There are various approaches that the company could adopt including proactive approaches, incremental improvements or breakthrough improvements. Any of these approaches has significant strategic implications on operations and the organization.