CASE STUDY ANALYSIS Learning Outcomes: LO-1: Demonstrate an understanding of the principles of operations management and achieving competitive capabilities in an organization LO-2: Explain the basic tools and techniques used in managing the operations LO-3: Analyze organization's operational system to run the process efficiently L0-4: Evaluate the operational strategies to enhance the productivity TITLE: "How McDonald's achieves its Operations Performance Objectives?" McDonald's achieved many of its objectives like reducing costs, improving product quality, punctual delivery, and speed of response, product flexibility in adapting to individual customer requirements, resistance to fluctuations in demand, advanced technology and excellent customer service by implementing many operations strategies. It focused on its Performance Objectives related to Operations Management to achieve its objectives. The company provided with the customers a variety of high quality food products which contains items made from fruits, vegetables and milk. It also provided a professional training to all its employees (customer care, restaurant employees, employees in kitchen, marketing, billing and other operations) on preparation of all food items through a systematic process, adhering to standards. The company focuses on meeting all the international specifications related to hygiene focusing on hand and dish washing by using latest technology. It continuously collected feedback from customers and took steps to improve its quality from time to time based on their feedback. It also implemented Total Quality Management (TQM) technique to improve its quality from time to time. McDonald's minimized the speed of delivering its items to the customers by designing its operations using an 'assembly line' in which each employee performs his/her operation quickly and sending it to the next person in the line. This reduced the waiting time for the customer. Most of the operations are also carried out in parallel to minimize the service time. The company set standard times for preparation, packing and delivering of each food item. This increased the productivity of the company. The other performance objective of dependability was achieved by maintaining consistency in its operations, repeated performance of trained employees through standard set of processes, and adhering to the standard operating procedures. The company also trained all the employees on how to handle the customers during peak and non-peak hours and serve them quickly It achieved the other performance objective of flexibility by quickly changing the items in the menu, by catering to the sudden rise in the demand, by offering balance of items in the menu depending on different tastes of adults and children, by training the staff on how to handle multiple tasks and jobs. The assembly line was also made flexible enough so that it can be changed from time to time. The flexibility in its operations is also achieved through its flexible organization structure and allotting shifts to employees for their continuous availability to the customers. McDonald's achieved the performance objective of cost reduction by minimizing the waste in its operations, eliminating rework, and by training employees on how to use all the available resources optimally. The raw material items are purchased only when they are required using the Just-in-Time technique. Thus, all the performance objectives of McDonald's are interconnected with each other. When the quality is improved, cost is reduced; delivery time reduced and flexibility improved which finally increases the dependability of customers on the company. This was achieved by McDonald's through continuous improvement efforts since it was established Questions: 1. What are the five Performance Objectives of Operations Management? 2. How McDonald's achieved these performance objectives