Managing Business Activities in McDonalds - Case Study Example

Managing Business Activities in McDonald’s Name Institution Course Date Table of Contents Introduction 3 Task 1 3 1.1 Evaluate the interrelationship between the different processes and functions of the organisation 3 1.2 Justify the methodology to be used to map processes to the organisation’s goals and objectives 5 1.3 Evaluate the output of the processes and the quality gateways 6 Task 2 7 2.1 Design plans which promote goals and objectives for your own area of responsibility 7 2.2 Write objectives, which are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-based - to align people and other resources in an effective and efficient way 8 2.3 Implement appropriate systems to achieve objectives in the most efficient way, on time, to budget and meeting organisational standards of quality 9 2.4 Carry out work activities meeting the operational plan through effective monitoring and control 9 Task 3 10 3.1 Design systems to manage and monitor quality standards specified by the organisation 10 3.2 Demonstrate a quality culture to ensure continuous monitoring, evaluation and development of the process 11 3.3 Recommend improvements which align with the organisation’s objectives and goals and which result in improvements 11 3.4 Report on the wider implications of proposed changes within the organisation 12 Task 4 12 4.1 Carry out risk assessments as required by legislation, regulation and organisational requirements, ensuring appropriate action is taken 12 4.2 Demonstrate that health and safety regulations and legislation, applicable in specific work situations, are correctly and effectively applied 13 4.3 Carry out a systematic review of organisational health and safety policies and procedures in order to ensure they are effective and compliant 13 4.4 Carry out a practical application of health and safety policies and procedures in the workplace. 14 Conclusion 14 References 16 Managing Business Activities in McDonald’s Introduction Managing business activities entails the process of defining and analysing vital opportunities and threats in a business organisation to maximize profitability (BPP Learning Media, 2010). McDonald’s is the largest fast food company with over 35,000 restaurants distributed around the globe. The company is involved in many activities that need to be organized and managed properly for its success (McDonald’s, 2012). This paper will analyse the importance of business processes in accomplishing goals in McDonald’s. It will provide a plan of action to be used by the company in order to attain SMART objectives. In addition, the report will highlight appropriate systems to be used by McDonald’s to improve its performance and will also detail out how the company can manage health and safety in the workplace. Task 1 1.1 Evaluate the interrelationship between the different processes and functions of the organisation A process tend to define the task done by anorganisation while the process defines the context in which processes an activites of an organisation exist. Processes and functions areinterrelated in any company. McDonald’s is the largest food chain restaurant in the world which has allowed it to develop functional structure (McDonald’s, 2012). The company has approximately 40 million customers walking into its stores every day. An organisation structure is used to define the system that is followed through which components of a firm coordinate together to achieve business goals and objectives. McDonald’s structure simplifies managing markets founded upon performance level. Since it is the largest fast food restaurant globally, McDonald’s tend to evolve constantly in order to address the current as well as the emerging market issues (McDonald’s, 2012). For instance, the firm produces new products every now and then in order to maintain its performance and reputation in satisfying its customers. Such endeavours and objectives are supported by McDonald’s organisational structure which is specialized to adapt to the competitive changing business environment. McDonald’s organisational structure has been modified to improve its global operations. McDonald’s consists of a divisional organisational structure (McDonald’s, 2012). In each division, special operational areas are done. Its organisational structure has been set to support flexibility and autonomy. Typically, the processes and functions of the company are interconnected. For instance, the functional departments of McDonald’s includes product development, sales and marketing, finance and distribution. These functional departments have responsibilities and activities they perform and contain leadership strucutres. Nevertheless, the fundamental process of the organisation which begins with an idea for a new service and product and ends with the distribution of the product to the customers tend to go through all the organisational bounderies. This means that none of the functional departments take up the entire process since everyone contributes to the accomplishment of the process execution. Each department is responsibefor a given function that contributes to the end-to-end process of the organisation. In addition, McDonald’s carries out its functions according to set values including quality, service, value as well as convenience (McDonald’s, 2014). An important part of its organisational culture is the service in every branch and delivery of quality food and service. The culture of McDonald’s is based on the notion of striving to improve its products and services, giving back to the society, carrying out activities ethically, and growing business profitably (McDonald’s, 2012). In addition, another important culture of McDonald’s is it’s strive to satisfy the needs of the shareholders at all costs. Each department in the company ensures its takes into consideration the culture and values set. From production, different departments take part in ensuring high quality products reach the customers. 1.2 Justify the methodology to be used to map processes to the organisation’s goals and objectives Figure 1 The relationship between structures and operation function of McDonald’s Figure 2 Organisation structure arrangement of McDonald’s Every department in McDonald’s contributes whether directly or indirectly to the production and delivery of quality products to the customers. The main goals and objectives of McDonald’s are to deliver quality products and services to the customers. For this reason, every department in the organisation is intertwined to one value and culture in offering quality, service and cleanliness to each customer all over the world (McDonald’s, 2014). The management of the company ensures that all the restaurant branches operate towards achieving common objectives. Since the main focus of McDonald’s is customers, every innovation, function and operation is based upon what the customer enjoys. The company has function-groups that carry out operation function. This enable the company address the elementary functions in its business. 1.3 Evaluate the output of the processes and the quality gateways The main processes in McDonald’s as mentioned earlier include marketing process, product development process, finance process and distribution process that are carried out by different departments. All these processes are arranged in the organisation’s structure (BPP Learning Media, 2010). It is very obvious that in order to produce quality products for the customers, McDonald’s had to hire more staff, more franchise and hence more employees. In addition, in effect to its culture that revolves around serving quality products and service to the customer and be socially responsible, McDonald’s train its employees in order to acquire good customer service and give back to the society through programs such as Ronald McDonald’s House Charity (McDonald’s, 2012). As seen earlier, the company’s vision is to the best service restaurant in the world by ensuring cleanliness and quality. In order to achieve this, McDonald’s organizes actions and attempts to maximize on the resources available. This is done by the management which often influences competitiveness of the company. The interrelation and coordination of departments in McDonald’s has enabled the company to function with higher degree of speed, customer service and cleanliness. Emphasis goes to its human resource that satisfies both the customers and the employees. The feature of McDonald’s structure is based on corporate control. The CEO often directs all business activities and mandates are passed from the management down to the middle managers, to the restaurant managers and then to the personnel. All these efforts put on its processes has enabled the company succeed in terms of satisfying customers’ needs and succeeding financially. Requirments are important in product development cycle in McDonald’s. Therefore, requirements should be correct before products ideas are passed through different functional departmenets of the company. The quality gateway tend to measure and test these requirements. In the company, requirements analysists are the only people with the power to pass requirements through the gate. These people check for completeness, relevance, tracebility among other qualities before becoming part of the specification. Requirements are also measured against the customer’sexpectations in order to ensure the product created in what the customers need. The marketing process should meet the company’s as well as the regulation standards. The company ensures that all the processes meet the requirments and standards of the company, the customers as well as the external lawsand regulations such as safety and health regulations. Task 2 2.1 Design plans which promote goals and objectives for your own area of responsibility The planning process is used by firms to attain their objective and goals (BPP Learning Media, 2010). In McDonald’s, the first operational plan to achieve goals is to strengthen the effectiveness to drive quicker and more customer-led decisions. As a manager, I can do this through the restructuring of the business operation into new segments that join together markets with identical needs, threats and opportunity for growth. The first segment can be the United States which is the first and the largest segment; the second one is the international lead market then high-growth markets and foundation markets. Through this plan, the business will easily be supported by streamlined teams and markets can be organized in relation to their growth drivers and company’s overall profitability (BPP Learning Media, 2010). In the plan also, I will develop leadership structure that will manage the operations in each segment. In addition, I will further optimize the restaurant ownership mix and accelerate capital to shareholders through increasing their franchising global percentage and enhancing the pace of franchising (McDonald’s, 2012). This will increase their net annual income and return to shareholders. Another concept to be introduced in the plan is to promote sustainability practices. For instance, the company’s raw materials should come from suppliers who are verified to support sustainability production. In addition,as the manager I can also change my leadership style to one that supports interdependency between different departments. This will facilitate effective communiation between memebrs of the departments and will lead to greater results. I can also promote innovation and creativety in the organisation through training and development of my subordinates that will enable them acquire kowldege needed in the nnovation endevours. 2.2 Write objectives, which are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-based - to align people and other resources in an effective and efficient way SMART objectives can ensure organisational success. Some SMART objectives for McDonald’s may include the following: 1. Maintaining quality management and product within the restaurant at all times in a friendly environment. This can be achieved through the coordination of the management and the human resource department. 2. Maintaining well-trained employees who would serve the huge amount of customers every day. This can be done by offering periodic training programs to the employees. Managers are responsible for ensuring proper training anddevelopment. 3. Reduce the time required to respond to customers queries by about 2 minutes by the end of the year. This is the work of the human resourse department and can be done through the hiring of additional personnel who would be specifically responsible for answering customer queries. 4. Introduce more nutritional and healthy foods in every store around the world by the end of the quarter. The product development and production department should be educated on other ways of producing new healthy foods. 5. Optimise company’s performance through the implementation of appropriate management and ownership structures within two year period. 6. Continue to reinstate and build the relationship existing between the company and the customers in order to boost its competitive advantage. This can be done through continuous quality improvement, effective customer service and product innovation. 7. Reduce the price of its products and services for the average household. This can be done through cutting prices in some products and offering store deals. This should be done within one year period. 2.3 Implement appropriate systems to achieve objectives in the most efficient way, on time, to budget and meeting organisational standards of quality There are several processes to be followed in order for the objectives to be relevant and within the budget. For instance, in order for McDonald’s to maintain the quality of its products at a friendly environment, it should ensure that its restaurants are clean and tidy all the time and management is in order. Communication is an important concept that will enable McDonald’s achieve most of its aims and objective. McDonald’s use of television advertising more will be able to attract customers and build awareness of the healthy range of products. Internal communication among the employees and the management is important in enhancing McDonald’s objectives (McDonald’s, 2012). The company will use internal communication among employees to transfer important information between staff and also to customers. The company can also carry out periodic training of the staff in order to enhance their customer service and expertise (BPP Learning Media, 2010). 2.4 Carry out work activities meeting the operational plan through effective monitoring and control To start with, I would identify the scope of the planning process associated with each work activity and determine what and who would play a role in the task. In addition, I would break the major activities into smaller attainable steps and establish the timeline for the completion of the work activity. Also, I would identify potential barriers I may face for the activities and develop and action plan to avoid such issues (BPP Learning Media, 2010). I would also ensure there is regular communication with the employees working on the activities. McDonald’s core function is to provide fast food products and services to the public. Nevertheless, this is not the only activity they do; they also source raw materials and transport their products around the world. In addition, they franchise restaurants. Work activities at McDonald’s can be organized according to geographical positioning (McDonald’s, 2012). This can be done by combining geographical markets with identical needs, threats and opportunities for growth. In addition, the management should be in charge of planning, organising, coordinating and controlling. The management should be given the responsibility of ensuring all restaurants work together in achieving a common goal. The accomplishment of every business activity can be given a timeline to ensure it is done within the time limit. In order to monitor the output of the operational plan, it is important first to set specific goals and targets. Afterwards, monitoring can be done through measuring the performance of the plan thorough measuring the percentage of profit from the plan, customer feedback and satisfaction, expenditure as a percentage of revenue and total costs incurred. Another way of monitoring output is benchmarking the activities against the competitors in order to understand the benefits of the outputs and plan (BPP Learning Media, 2010). Task 3 3.1 Design systems to manage and monitor quality standards specified by the organisation A system is an organized, determined structure that constitutes interrelated and interdependent entities that consistently influences each other in order to maintain their activity as well as the existence of the system (BPP Learning Media, 2010). Therefore, McDonald’s can be able to monitor their quality standards by focusing on the quality management principle such as customer focus, leadership, procedure and system approach to management, incessant improvement and realistic approach to decision making. Customer focus will enable the organization to meet the customers’ needs by understanding the current and future customer trends. This will ensure that McDonald’s continuously strive to surpass customer expectations. Leadership will establish a harmony of purpose as well as direction of the organization (McDonald’s, 2012). This should be incorporated into the organization so as to maintain the environment in which individuals can be fully involved in accomplishing the goals and objectives of the organization. Involvement of people is fundamental for it allows their ability to be utilized for the organization’s benefits. Process approach can enable the system achieve their results more efficiently. System approach to management will identify, understand and manage interconnected processes. Continual improvement and factual approach to decision making will ensure a continuous overall improvement as well as effective decisions with regard to the analysis of both data and information. 3.2 Demonstrate a quality culture to ensure continuous monitoring, evaluation and development of the process Total Quality Management is the procedure that is followed by the management as well as the employees in ensuring active involvement in the production of goods and services within the organization. McDonald’s maintains a quality culture through training. The organization trains people on how to be fast, kind and precise. Because of their wide international scope, they have translators who teach and communicate in more than 20 languages concurrently. They also manage ten global training centres where the employees of the organization receive their training. Total Quality Management in McDonald’s entails that employees have to be at work on time (McDonald’s, 2012). They should also dress appropriately, neat and clean. The employees must constantly wash their hands to ensure proper hygiene. Moreover, McDonald’s employees ought to follow Standard Operational Procedures in order for customers to obtain remarkable quality and service. 3.3 Recommend improvements which align with the organisation’s objectives and goals and which result in improvements In order of McDonald’s to enhance its business viability, it can take advantage of the new emerging markets and hence continuously expand. They can also reduce their risks immensely by coming up with new products and also by entering new businesses involved in the fast food category. For instance, fixing dinner into the McDonald’s schedule has been one of their greatest struggles (McDonald’s, 2014). Also, having a dish that isn’t the regular sandwich or hamburger such as chopped steak platter is another problem. This variety of meals would expand their customer base fulfilling their goals and objectives. In addition, McDonalds can device an integrated promotional mix that combines both traditional as well as modern digital media in order to promote their own brand (McDonald’s, 2014). 3.4 Report on the wider implications of proposed changes within the organisation From the organizational change in McDonald’s, it has brought about a number of impacts. Through simple technological upgrades, the organization can suffer great pain if they are not implemented smoothly. In addition, as the organization grows in response to market situations, some of the employees are either added or even removed. Therefore, the functions become either centralized or decentralized. This affects both the managers as well as their employees. In addition, McDonald’s concept of sustainability of beef will affect environmentally conscious customers. Also, McDonald’s has focused aggressively in increasing its breakfast share (McDonald’s, 2012). This has been done to attract their morning office-going demographic. They came up with McCafe which is aiming at the Asian market. This diversification has been able to attract more attention of the general population therefore having a larger market base. Task 4 4.1 Carry out risk assessments as required by legislation, regulation and organisational requirements, ensuring appropriate action is taken The Safety, Health and Welfare Act require employers to identify the hazards in the work environment and assess the risk presented at the workplace by these hazards. The main objective of the risk assessment is to ensure that nobody gets hurt. In carrying out the statutory risk assessment in McDonald’s, I would identify the hazards and risks, decide who can be potentially harmed, evaluate the risks and come up with control measures, record my finding and implement them and then review the assessment and update if need be. There are several methods in which hazards can be identified. I can walk around the workplace and ask the employees their opinions on hazardous component of their work. Once I have identified the hazards, I would need to know the people who might be harmed such as those working in the kitchen or even the member of the public. Afterwards, I would then protect the people from harm either by removing it completely or controlling them. I would then write down my findings as a legal requirement and review the assessment every now and then in order to identify the areas that need update of correction. 4.2 Demonstrate that health and safety regulations and legislation, applicable in specific work situations, are correctly and effectively applied The main safety and health acts and regulations that govern McDonald’s operations include the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, Workplace Regulations 1992, reporting of Injuries and Dangerous Occurencues Regulation 1995 and Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulation 1999. The HSW act highlights the duties of companies to make sure that the health, welfare and safety of the employees is secured. It is required that every organisation to safeguard the employees’ welfare within the workplace. On the other hand, the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations highlights the responsibility of the employer to ensure employees and safe and healthy. It may entail arragements for emergencies and training for employees. The RIDOR 1995 require organisations to be in control of premises by reporting induries, deaths and other dangerous occurences. Workplace Regulations 1992 in addition deals with the working environment. employers should ensure that the working environment is safe and suitable and does not present risk for employees. Apart from the external safety and health acts governing the company, McDonald’s comprise a detailed safety management system which is interpreted into its training and auditing systems (McDonald’s, 2012). An important element of the system is the legal requirements and company’s policies. In the company, employees are required to adhere to comply with the safety policy. 4.3 Carry out a systematic review of organisational health and safety policies and procedures in order to ensure they are effective and compliant McDonald’s has a comprehensive safety management system that involves mandatory training of the employees in line with the safety and healthy working environment. In addition, the company carry out regular checks that ensure the implemented safety systems are operating as required. The company works with suppliers who test and monitor ingredients (McDonald’s, 2014).Also, McDonald’s have comprehensive programme that makes sure the safety of toys and promotional items is adhered to. One important element of the company’s policies is to ensure that all the employees apply to the safety policies and notify the management of any problem related to the health and safety of their operations. According to the health policy of McDonald’s, one is not supposed to use illegal drugs in the work environment while engaged in work activities. The company has a health and safety committee that assist with issues concerning to the health and safety of the customers and the employees (McDonald’s, 2014). Employees are expected to wear protective gears when they are doing work-related activities that pose as a threat to them like handling fire. In addition, McDonald’s review its safety and health policies annually in order to make the necessary changes. 4.4 Carry out a practical application of health and safety policies and procedures in the workplace. The quality safety and health standards for food, beverages and toys in McDonald’s adhere to the government requirements. These measures assist in protecting the customers and local community at large. In addition, training the employees with the aim of ensuring that the safety, hygiene and health policy is adhered to has contributed to less incidents and accidents in the workplace. In order for every employee in McDonald’s to adhere to the health and safety policy, a policy statement should be developed (McDonald’s, 2014). This statement should include all the rules and regulations governing the operations of the company in ensuring that the health and safety of the employees and the customers is preserved. The policy statement should then be circulated throughout the company to ensure that everybody has got glimpse on it. There are benefits that McDonald’s yield from implementing health and safety policies in its operations.to start with, these polices ensures that all employees and customers are protected from potential threats. However, such policies require a lot of cost in order to be implemented. But in the long-run, such policies have shown to have benefits overwhelming its cost expenditure (McDonald’s, 2014). Conclusion To sum up, managing business activities are regarded an important element in any organisation. McDonald’s is the largest fast food company in the world with many activities under its sleeve that are required to be managed properly. McDonald’s activities around the globe should be restructured into new segments that join together markets with identical needs, threats and opportunity for growth. In addition, the objectives of the company should be established in order to align them with its day-to-day operations. With regard to safety and health, McDonald’s has established health and safety policy that is aimed at protecting the employees and customers from potential harm. In addition, McDonald’s can monitor their quality standards by focusing on the quality management principles such as customer focus, leadership, process approach, continual improvement to name a few. Their total quality management procedure involves their employees interactively by ensuring that they are fast, kind and precise when delivering services to their employees. The organization can enhance their business viability by taking advantage of emerging markets and integrating promotional mix into their brand promotion to name a few. References BPP Learning Media 2010, Business Essentials: Management: communications and achieving results : course book, London, BPP Learning Media. McDonalds 2012, Value Chain and Competitive Advantage of McDonald’s, Retrieved from https://fagansusanto.wordpress.com/2012/11/22/value-chain-and-competitive-advantage-of-mcdonalds/ McDonalds 2014, What Makes McDonald's? [online] available from http://www.mcdonalds.co.uk/ukhome/whatmakesmcdonalds/questions/running-the-bsiness/businessstrategy/what-are-the-business-aims-and-objectives-for-mcdonalds-in-the-uk.html Read More