Total Quality Management
Student’s Name
Institution Affiliation
Date
McDonald’s Quality Management Project
Introduction
The quality management process is defined as fundamental beliefs, rules, norms, and values accepted as facts guiding processes within an organization. Quality management aims to steer performance improvement (Bole et al., 2014). It entangles improvement in other processes within the organization apart from service and product improvement. There are seven quality management principles defined by the international standards of quality management. They include; customer focus, top management or leadership commitment; employee involvement or people engagement; process approach; improvement / continual improvement; evidence-based decision making, and supplier or relationship management (Ceil, 2017). The following project focuses on the three main quality management principles that are essential to McDonald’s. They include process approach, customer focus, and supplier relationship management.
The company history saw a transformation from drive-through restaurant to chicken McNuggets. Their first menu consisted of French fries, Big Quarter pound, and chicken nuggets. The main breakfast meal is Sausage McMuffin with eggs. McDonald’s’ holds the title of being one of the leading and famous food service global retailers. The food chain serves millions of customers daily around the world. It has been able to maintain a competitive advantage since they are not only focusing on selling products. However, they change the product ingredients and types according to regional or home country requirements. The menu has been expanded to a wide range of chicken and fish, burgers and sandwiches, salads, snacks, beverages, shakes, and desserts.
McDonald’s’ are currently faced with three major challenges that they must overcome. They include perception matters, the real estate problem, and the baggage of operational activity. The starters experience a perception problem since the restaurant became popular during the fast food period. The idea of fast food fitted perfectly in an industrial society where time was viewed as a precious commodity (Suryavanshi, 2018). The company menu remained unchanged for many years, something that made them appear old fashioned. The change in local and fresh ingredients on the company causes a paradigm shift in their operations.
Like any other large organization changing things overnight would affect the operational process of the organization. They have further faced criticism over the years on books and publishing about the kind of ingredients and places where they source the food products. The solution to the criticism was that the company CEO had to prove that they were offering quality services, that is why average customers would frequent the restaurant daily. They further implemented measures that were intended to change customers’ perceptions like the reduction of salt content in food, composting practices, and offering other options like carrot and fruit sticks in the menu.
They also faced operational baggage complexity. Being a large organization, they had collected baggage range over the years. Most customers’ were getting confused by the company menu. The investors also had a problem with the intention of unlocking value-form real estate. The fast-food restaurant growth made them develop and improve on their menu; however, most customers were discouraged as they were getting confused by the elaborate menu. The transition to a more detailed menu led to internal issues in operations and waiting time. The other operational issues outside the restaurant include the food safety scandal in China. The labor dispute in Los Angeles forced the company to cut off its supplies from japan. The instances represent the challenge of managing complex operations. As the company grows in terms of size, demography, and scope of operations, the challenges can make a significant impact on its operations.
The company’s attempt by investors to generate money from real estate holdings has been understandable. It owns some real estate, but they are in a tricky financial engineering process. The idea of the company owning the retail stores has not gone well with the organization because they are not centrally placed or have good access to the customers. It has proved unprofitable for the organization to own the retail stores as they result in losses. However, the real estate investment may help the company to raise more funds that will support its operational activities.
The total quality management project objective is to establish excellent customer focus, a better process approach, and develop robust supplier relationships or management relationships. Customers play a significant role in the development of an organization (Bole et al., 2014). They are the main source of income for an organization through sales revenue. It is that income that finances the operations of the organization on a routine basis. Without customers, the company has no meaning and is deemed to cease operations within the shortest time possible. Hence, the company is left without any other choice but to develop a great customer relationship through customer focus. It is the process that determines the end product of an organization.
The product or service that a customer receives upon payment the quality is determined by the process it has undergone. The reasons make the process approach a great point of evaluation as it determines the quality of what is available in the market for consumption. The company must also develop a good supplier relationship to ensure that the products supplied are supplied on a timely basis so that inconveniences do not come up. Supplier relationship management plays a critical role or part in the operational experience of the organization. S supplements the process of final product preparation.
The global strategy towards achieving this objective is customer focus, the process approach, and relationship management. A customer is someone who purchases and organization’s products for consumption or commercial purposes (Suryavanshi, 2018). Under customer focus, the organization must look onto customers’ needs through monitoring their relationship with the company brand. Customers are significant in the survival of any business. Without them, the business has no purpose. The customer focus is thus a pivotal element in when it comes to quality management of an organization. McDonald’s focuses on a strategy of offering customers their favorite place, drink, and way to eat. The company realized the need to meet customers’ expectations, wants by not only satisfying them or offering them goods. The health of customers comes first for the company, but they have to always focus on delivering quality products.
The company carried out a strategy on the antibiotic policy as they tried to handle the situation that antibiotics were supposed to be utilized in a prescribed manner to avoid and ensure effective and efficient animal, and human health in the future. At one point, these were achieved by the chicken that was bought from Texas. The animals were to offer a kind of antibiotics drug that ensured that the chicken quality was maintained over again and again.
Every company’s quality becomes before everything when dealing with their customers. They are a significant asset to the operations of the organization hence their importance. Burgers form an integral part of the company menu; three employees play a global role to sustain a commitment to their beef, strengthening an idea of full utilization with a pinch of salt, pepper with no artificial flavors added. The company boasts of this and takes pride in the preparation policy. The assurance of leaving room for quality improvement is a great concern to the company management. The intent to use; caged eggs within the USA and Canada markets shortly. They are intended to use cow milk that is not treated or preserved by other products and role out the outsourcing of other products such as the whole bean coffee and the whole ground.
Additionally, the quality management team in the organization focuses on contributions of dietary for it in the company menu. The company encourages individuals t to live a balanced diet by avoiding foods that can pose harm to their health (Suryavanshi, 2018). They further introduced a position that would ensure they were in full interaction with their customers. The main mascot objective was to offer entertainment opportunities to customers upon laying their requests and consumption of the company products.
The company tried as much as possible to ensure that their clients were always kept entertained while consuming their products. It is the factor that showed clearly that in modern-day business tactics in order to be at par with competitors, one must be able to distinguish themselves from how they place their brand image within the public domain. McDonald’s has more than 30 languages to help overcome the communication barrier with the company clients. It is an attempt that makes them further sell comfortably to any tribe within the various continents, being that they are a global company.
The company currently is focusing on touching the emotions of environmentally attached customers in terms of logistics, recycling, antilittering, packaging, communications greening the workplace and the company environment. It is also demonstrated in the company policy campaign towards sustainability and maintenance of the green environment.
The second principle is on the focus on the business approach. It is one of the different approaches to quality management. The process focuses o the company input materials, internal practices, or activities that result in their product output. The main aim is to ensure continuous improvement in the company operations by consistently focusing on the various benefits if ensuring efficient and effective measures towards the maintenance of adequate records (Ceil, 2017). The process approach can either lead to building or destroying the economic performance of the organization.
It is because it determines the quality of the product or the service offered by the conversion of the raw materials and other services if it is a service industry. In these scenarios, McDonald’s sells and offers various types of products they have developed to the market. The companies perform well if the leaders can transform ad coordinate these activities as it produces a productive environment with quality products. The McDonalds have consistently improved their processes over the years since its inception. The process development has enabled them to acquire more customers year in, year out. It is because of the excellent reputation created by taking into consideration customer complains about processes that may take time and influence their perception of the organization.
Notably, they are on the verge of making profits and being a fast-food organization, and they cannot achieve these without taking great focus on their process development procedure. Fast food restaurants are cropping out every day, and McDonald’s have to ensure that they keep maintaining the first position as the best in fats food services and products worldwide. They have gained a great customer base and control or offers products to thousands of clients. Controlling such a customer base does not require any mistake in the process that can lead to a negative reputation as the impact can be drastically felt in the company’s financial performance as sales may suddenly go down overnight. Being a fast-food restaurant makes it more perishable and complicated in one way or another. Continuous incorporation of activities has seen the company develop more activities and strategies toward attaining its objectives and goals (Bole et al., 2014).
Mc Donald’s is one of the largest global fast-food franchises globally; hence they hold the food they offer to a more excellent standard. The main aim is to serve quality food that is of excellent quality, meeting and following food safety standards while observing customer choices. They are passionate about the food they offer every day and try to ensure that the food is safe in one way or the other. They try to ensure that they offer choices, and the food is offered in the best choices possible. There is the use of real ingredients and the people who use them worldwide.
Tastes and the spirit of the people who enjoy the foods worldwide are tasted before the food is left into the market. The various foods offered also depend on the local community patterns of eating so that they do not use other communities’ way of life to determine the kind of food they can offer in a different region. These may affect the kind of customer response they expect to get since different regions have different cultures and norms regarding food. A meal that would be valued within the company outlets in Europe may not be the case with an African focus and meal preferences. The way meals are prepared may also be different, so the company has no choice but to determine the best possible way the lives the entire client contented with hit products and services.
The employees’ behavior towards food handling is very keys. They have to understand that they need to take great care to ensure the standards are observed. The quality food offering is one of the main concerns that the company has taken into consideration (Ceil, 2017). They source fresh ingredients to ensure that they observe the flavor and taste of their products as signature meals. Most of their suppliers are encouraged to apply ethical practices in their dealings with the company in order to ensure that they do not use short cuts that can lead to the company putting their customers’ lives at risk. The fast-food business is compassionate when it comes to caring and avoiding anything that can pose a danger or harm to consumers’ lives. Training is always offered to the staff to ensure that they maintain the great taste and flavor of their products. The company has developed its menu continues to be in line with the current changes and developments in the fields of ingredients and possible fast-food meals that are continuously cropping up due to a combination of flavors and ingredients.
The company improved its packaging over the years to be more environmentally friendly. The packaging is what keeps the customers’ food, warm, fresh, and safe. The main aim is to use recyclable packaging that can be used in various instances. Moreover, use materials that do not pose environmental dangers to the existing vegetation.
The other concern is on the supplier relationship management. The McDonalds’ boost is supplying traditional quality food to its millions of customers across the globe. Their supply follows the rules and regulations which are critical to the development of their system. The company should always strive towards maintaining its relationships with suppliers because of the benefits that are associated with them. One of them is the enhanced performance of both the interested parties and organizations by responding to various opportunities and challenges to every party involved. There must be a mutual understanding of the intended values and goals among the interested parties. There must also be the increased capability of parties to create value for their interest through the sharing of resources, competence, and management quality risks. Lastly, a well maintained and controlled supply chain provides a stable supply of products into the market or to the customers.
The measurement of the objectives will be based on the level of growth in terms of sales (Bole et al., 2014). In developing relationships, suppliers will apply the key account management techniques that will be used to evaluate the response level. The process approach will be measured based on the time taken to accomplish different tasks. The shorter the duration, the more precise and open the process. All the employees involved in the process must clearly understand how it should be carried out.
However, as earlier mentioned, there must be continuous improvement in all three sectors as they play a pivotal role in McDonald’s. For the company to maintain its top position as one of the most abundant world fast-food restaurants, there must be consistent improvement and training of staff to ensure success is attained on a routine basis.
References
Ceil, C. (2017). Service Quality and Branding Strategies at McDonald’s. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2984100
Suryavanshi, S. (2018). Analysis of Communication Process in Mcdonalds. International Journal Of Trend In Scientific Research And Development, Volume-2(Issue-5). https://doi.org/10.31142/ijtsrd17132
Bole, V., Fink, L., & Prašnikar, J. (2014). Customer focus competencies and the dynamics of project teams. Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, 27(1-2), 198-214. https://doi.org/10.1080/14783363.2014.970876