McDonald's Case Study

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McDonald’s achieved its position as a leader in the fast food industry through clear and deep focus on specific competitive advantages. The company achieved high performance and dominated the market by concentrating its operations strategy around limited, measurable and congruent goals rather than assuming the feasibility of achieving high performance in every dimension of the competition. McDonald’s distinguished itself by consistency and uniformity. The operations strategy and policies was strictly set to achieve these goals. I think that McDonalds just GOT IT by understanding what the customer is looking for in the fast food industry and did not accept any compromise on these specific goals. As much as McDonald’s was improving its products; it was also open to design and utilize technology to facilitate the operations and provide its best and fast service at low price.

Customers perceived the same experience every time they visit McDonald’s anywhere. No matter when and where; almost the exact service, quality of taste and speed are anticipated. The reason behind this consistency came out of several strategic and focused features that distinguished McDonald’s operating system. The system was designed to give great attention of the following: improving the product, developing outstanding supplier relationship, improving equipment and training and monitoring franchisees. One of the main reasons why the operating system at McDonald’s was perfect is because of the small menu size which allowed for focus and specialization.

Improving the product and its quality was one of the most important goals with no compromise. McDonald’s understands that to achieve this; it needs to build strong relations with both suppliers and franchisees. The key point of applying this in reality was to set a formula of mutual benefits that turns the business relation into commitment. McDonald’s wanted to get its raw materials based on its specifications that meets its quality standards while at the same time consider fair profit margins of the suppliers. It required that suppliers must strictly adhere to the specifications of the product quality. McDonalds used to regularly monitor suppliers and analyze products supplied. There was a high level of cooperation between McDonalds and suppliers to discuss various ways to improve product quality. In the same way the relation was with franchisees. Franchisees were provided with required training and expertise. The franchise fees were based on sales performance and that allowed the franchisees to feel like partners. Moreover, McDonald’s consultants used to regularly visit the franchisees to review the restaurant performance and provide required evaluation for improvements. Franchisees were also regularly monitored for various categories including: quality, service and cleanliness. These categories are the recipe of capturing the value that the customer