Fast Food Feast

Abstract

The topic and basis of this paper will center on operations management and the importance of defining the production process. McDonald's and Wendy's are the two fast food chains observed. "It is estimated that consumers spend nearly $100 billion dollars on fast food every year" (Palo Alto Medical Foundation, 2012). A common goal of retailers is to expand, and retain customers. In addition, of importance is to grow market share and profits. Fast food chains will attempt new item concepts and store formats in an effort to create differentiation.

To achieve the goals requires a sound operations process. As operations involve the production of goods and services, operational management is the aspect of a business involved in producing goods and services in the most efficient and productive manner. Operations within fast food chains focus on product quality, service reliability, and the general management of operations.

Production Process

The time-based strategy is an important parameter in the production process for fast food chains. "The central theme of a time-based strategy is that an organization can achieve a powerful competitive advantage through speed: by responding faster to customers, by faster development of new products and services, and by faster movement of products through the supply chain" (Blackburn, 2012). Integrated with time-based strategy is time-based competition. "Time-based competition is a broad-based competitive strategy which emphasizes time as the major factor for achieving and maintaining a sustainable competitive advantage. It seeks to compress the time required to propose, develop, manufacture, market and deliver its products" (Inman, 2012). Fundamental to fast food chains is the ability to be fast to market and fast to produce.

Both McDonald's and Wendy's production process incorporates the time-based strategy with focus on maximizing production efficiency. "In order to achieve the demands of efficiency, there are three special processes or arrangements in the world of McDonald's: streamlining the process, simplifying the products, and putting the customers to work" (Wu, 2009).

Wu, 2009 states the following:

Streamlining the process records every movement and step of labour is

pre-arranged scientifically in order to avoid the unnecessary waste of the

resources. Simplifying the products implies that the products are simple,

fast and easy to prepare. Last, putting the customers to work, entails the

customers joining in at the counter to place their order with the counter staff.

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