McDonald’s To Whittle Down Menu
1) Offering more products or offering more complex products makes operations management more difficult in multiple ways. One way an operations manager’s job gets more difficult with complex product offerings is inventory becomes more difficult to manage. The more items you offer in your product line, the more suppliers you will need to supply you with the materials to produce the offerings. For example, the operations manager for McDonald’s currently might deal with a fish supplier for their fish-filet sandwich, but after the menu changes they might decide to cut out the fish-filet sandwich from their menu, due its lack of appeal to their customers. In this case, McDonald’s would have less inventory to manage …show more content…
One way they can incorporate a complex product offering is by adjusting their process of production accordingly. For example, in the fast food industry companies are starting to use online purchasing for pick-up in the near future. This process not only cuts down drive thru wait times, but also makes the restaurant run more efficiently. This ordering online helps speed up the production process, thus it allows the employees to handle more complex items that might involve using multiple ingredients due to the amount of time saved through these new processes. The next strategy that can be used to combat a complex product offering is hiring and retaining employees that are well trained and motivated. A well trained staff that is motivated can make any process, no matter amount or complexity of the offerings, run efficiently. For example, if the employees are trained efficiently they create more output with less errors, thus saving time and money for the mistake that would occur from a under trained employee. As one can see, the management of a complex product offering can be difficult, but it can be managed if …show more content…
The reason why we believed this was a good approach to the situation is that with dwindling down their menu, they can start to focus on producing quality hamburgers, their core competency. As a group, we felt that McDonald’s was starting to produce products that didn’t fit well into their core competencies, which in turn was hurting their profits and the overall experience a customer obtains from going into a McDonalds. For example, even though the exact items of removal were not disclosed, we felt that McDonald’s should not be producing salads of any sort because people do not go to McDonald’s hoping to eat a fresh garden salad. People go to McDonald’s to enjoy the wonderful hamburgers they have built themselves around, so providing the customer with more options that are irrelevant to their core competency is unnecessary. The other measure that the article mentions that McDonald’s is taking is adding computer tablets to allow customers to add toppings of their choice to their favorite sandwich. We felt this measure was right in the sense they want to become more technologically advanced and compete against their competition, but we also found this to be an issue. The issue we had with this implementation is that this system integration would make McDonald’s more of a mass customization process unit than their already repetitive process focused unit. We do not think this
1) Offering more products or offering more complex products makes operations management more difficult in multiple ways. One way an operations manager’s job gets more difficult with complex product offerings is inventory becomes more difficult to manage. The more items you offer in your product line, the more suppliers you will need to supply you with the materials to produce the offerings. For example, the operations manager for McDonald’s currently might deal with a fish supplier for their fish-filet sandwich, but after the menu changes they might decide to cut out the fish-filet sandwich from their menu, due its lack of appeal to their customers. In this case, McDonald’s would have less inventory to manage …show more content…
One way they can incorporate a complex product offering is by adjusting their process of production accordingly. For example, in the fast food industry companies are starting to use online purchasing for pick-up in the near future. This process not only cuts down drive thru wait times, but also makes the restaurant run more efficiently. This ordering online helps speed up the production process, thus it allows the employees to handle more complex items that might involve using multiple ingredients due to the amount of time saved through these new processes. The next strategy that can be used to combat a complex product offering is hiring and retaining employees that are well trained and motivated. A well trained staff that is motivated can make any process, no matter amount or complexity of the offerings, run efficiently. For example, if the employees are trained efficiently they create more output with less errors, thus saving time and money for the mistake that would occur from a under trained employee. As one can see, the management of a complex product offering can be difficult, but it can be managed if …show more content…
The reason why we believed this was a good approach to the situation is that with dwindling down their menu, they can start to focus on producing quality hamburgers, their core competency. As a group, we felt that McDonald’s was starting to produce products that didn’t fit well into their core competencies, which in turn was hurting their profits and the overall experience a customer obtains from going into a McDonalds. For example, even though the exact items of removal were not disclosed, we felt that McDonald’s should not be producing salads of any sort because people do not go to McDonald’s hoping to eat a fresh garden salad. People go to McDonald’s to enjoy the wonderful hamburgers they have built themselves around, so providing the customer with more options that are irrelevant to their core competency is unnecessary. The other measure that the article mentions that McDonald’s is taking is adding computer tablets to allow customers to add toppings of their choice to their favorite sandwich. We felt this measure was right in the sense they want to become more technologically advanced and compete against their competition, but we also found this to be an issue. The issue we had with this implementation is that this system integration would make McDonald’s more of a mass customization process unit than their already repetitive process focused unit. We do not think this