OPM300-INTRO TO OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT In 1937 a man named Patrick McDonald of New Hampshire opened a restaurant named “The Airdrome” in sunny southern California. In 1940 his two sons, Maurice and Richard, decided to move the entire building to San Bernardino, California which is roughly 40 miles south east of Los Angeles. Their menu consisted of mainly barbecue with about 25 food items on the menu. Hamburgers at that time were ten cents and all you can drink juice cost you a nickel.
They renamed their father’s restaurant “McDonald’s”. Eight years later after noting that most of the profit came from hamburgers, the brothers closed the restaurant and created an expedited service system which streamlined the process for producing hamburgers in shorter amounts of time. Once the restaurant re opened, their menu consisted of only hamburgers, French fries and milk shakes. The restaurant became extremely successful, and most of its fame was spread by word of mouth of dedicated customers.
In 1953, McDonalds franchise was developed and four McDonald’s restaurants were erected in California and Arizona. In 2011, the McDonalds franchise operates over 31,000 restaurants worldwide, and employing more than 1. 5 million people. McDonalds is one of the most well-known franchises globally with leading shares in the service restaurant segment of the fast food market. Some of the products that McDonalds serves are their world famous French Fries, the Big Mac, Quarter Pounder, Chicken McNuggets and the Egg McMuffin.
McDonalds continuously attempts to produce quality service and innovation to fulfill customer satisfaction. Some of the attempts are in hope of maintaining dedicated customers, while attracting new customers which produce increased revenue and profit. McDonalds has added a more health conscious menu in order to meet the new health growing desires and options by the American consumer. They offer low calorie grilled chicken sandwiches, fish sandwich, salads, yogurt parfait, fruit instead of fries, snack wraps which are smaller in portions, and low calorie wraps.
McDonalds also provides nutritional facts for foods and products that they sell and produce. McDonald’s operations are unique but very similar to other franchises within the fast food industry. McDonalds prides themselves on serving quality foods that meet customer satisfaction. They outsource most of their products, expediting the food process in their restaurants. A typical McDonald’s restaurant employs anywhere from 50-60 employees. Most employees are paid by the hour with very few salary positions.
Their responsibility is to prepare the food, serve customers and carry out tasks for the efficient running of the restaurants. They have a production line which is a speedier process in order to complete customer orders anywhere from 3-5 minutes. What used to be the case was McDonald’s would pre-cook a batch of hamburgers and let them sit under heat lamps. They would keep them for as long as possible and eventually would discard whatever could not be sold.
The only way to get a fresh hamburger under their old system was to ask for a special order or special burger. Now, due to more sophisticated services and the addition of their burger making production line; McDonald’s is able to make your food fast enough and wait until it’s been ordered rather than having pre cooked burgers under heat lamps. The McDonald’s standard is now to wait until you place an order to make it, unlike the old days. This higher quality customer service is subject to McDonald’s ability to actually produce at a faster rate.
McDonald’s believes that the success of the restaurants and the company is achieved through the people it employs and their production system. McDonald’s strives to produce the best quality product and to employ the best quality people. Its policies, services and products reflect the company’s determination to fulfil its goal of staying on top of the fast food industry. Hence why McDonalds is the world’s largest chain of hamburgers and fast food restaurants. They now serve more than 58 million customers daily with restaurants in more than 118 countries. .
