Mc Donald

This may seem like an odd question, after all McDonald’s is all about fast food and smiling at the customers, so what can they teach a manufacturing plant where there are no customers on the shop floor, where the end products are nothing to do with fast food?

Well actually a manufacturing plant can learn a good deal from the McDonald’s philosophy. Indeed McDonald’s is about efficiency without sacrificing quality, speed, again without sacrificing quality and finally it is about consistency.

McDonalds is really a mini manufacturing plant – different work cells prepare various “components” there is an assembly area, there is a supply chain coupled with “customer support” (i.e. the sales clerk).

McDonalds thrives on some core fundamentals;

• Standardization – a Big Mac is a Big Mac – go into any restaurant across America and you’ll get these same result every time coupled with a fastidious approach to quality

• A production process approach – different work cells combining to make the finished product

• Just in Time production – make what’s needed – small numbers of ready finished product

• Flexible and multi skilled workforce

• Lean production – face it – the backroom kitchen of a McDonalds is not massive – they have gone to town on ensuring they get the most out of their real estate

McDonald’s are keen to empower employees but within certain constraints. They effectively operate a Just In Time production system and the concepts of efficiency, speed and consistency have to be undertaken within the constraints of the Just In Time philosophy.

For example, McDonald’s prides itself on fast food, that is, after all their goal. So it would make sense for them to start in the morning and produce 1,000 cheese burgers, keep them warm and then sell them off. But in fact what happens is almost the reverse.

You go into McDonald’s and there may be 3 or 4 cheese burgers sat on the plate being kept warm. However it is often fewer than this. So you have to ask for a cheese...