Author: spr1331edanos

McDonald’s goes on a McDiet

Posted on by spr1331edanos

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Most people associate McDonalds with the traditional meat and potatoes menu that they started with, the traditional cheeseburger and french fries.  However, in recent times the Oak Brook based chain, with its 68 million daily customers in over 119 countries has expanded their menu to include items that can satisfy all different types of taste buds   By implementing these new items, like the snack wraps, angus burgers, and steak bagels  McDonalds has tried to cover all territories of the fast food market.  They have even offered rib sandwiches and the most recent offering of mighty wings (traditional chicken wings). Since 2007, McDonalds has added over 60 items to their menu.

Lately, however McDonalds has started to eliminate items off of their menu.  Starting with the Angus Burger last month, McDonalds claims that 4 more items will soon be off their menu including the Caesar salads, McSkillet Burritos, Southern Style Biscuits and steak bagels.  This is in an effort to better manage a menu that has grown in the past 7 years.

Because McDonalds is such an excellent example of quality and process management, this article serves as a good example to look at the way the McDonalds handles and controls its processes.  The traditional idea of McDonalds was that it was a company that could do the basics and do them better than anyone else meaning serve traditional Cheeseburgers and fries in a quick, clean, and friendly restaurant and atmosphere better than any of its competitors.  Clearly it has done this as it is the biggest fast food chain in the world and as a matter of necessity for an ever expanding target market, the menu has swollen to a size the original owners would have never thought.

Therein lies obvious potential problems which I believe McDonalds has realized.  By having so many different products, it becomes difficult to effectively offer the same consistent quality of all of these items across the board.  This I believe is because of the numerous different processes each different item must go through before it reaches the consumer.  This ranges from ingredient storage, cooking, preparing, and delivery.  This also can cause process variation in McDonalds training process as the menu becomes harder to master for its employees.  With new items so frequently being added, McDonalds lends itself to a host of possible errors in everyday preparation of these items to its customers.

What McDonalds is doing by reducing its menu items slowly is going back to basics somewhat.  By creating a more manageable menu, McDonalds can better focus on improving on its continued improvement of processes already associated with existing menu items.  By Improving their base menu items, McDonalds should see an increase in customer satisfaction across the multiple countries it occupies.

Do you think that eliminating the numerous menu items listed and more will help McDonalds achieve a higher quality standard for its other items and improve more so on its current operations? How else could this move help McDonalds achieve higher quality across the company.

 

Sources:

Crains ” More food disappearing from McDonalds”

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20130517/BLOGS08/130519794/more-food-disappearing-from-mcdonalds-menu

” WikiPedia McDonalds”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald’s

Bloomberg New “McDonalds Cutting its Menu”

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/mcdonalds-reduce-menu-bloomberg-reports-101556997.html

Business Insider “McDonalds to Start Cutting Menu Items”

http://www.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-to-start-cutting-menu-items-2013-5

 

American Airlines and US Airways: together at last

Posted on by spr1331edanos

In today’s travel industry, delays, overbooking  and cancellations have become common place.  Today there are many airline carriers to chose from but only very few have stood the test of time and and maintained their profitability   By Providing better service and less obstacles to swift traveling, companies like United and American Airlines have grown into brand names if you will.  However, when large carriers like American Airlines expand and grow, the quality of their service is potentially at risk.

In March of 2013, congress approved one of the largest mergers in the airline industry’s history.  It agreed to the merger proposition for American Airlines to combine with U.S. airways making it the largest airline carrier in the world with over 6,700 daily flights to 336 destinations and a little over 10,000 employees.   Now the common idea with large mergers such as this, is that quality will suffer as the company become larger.  So by analyzing some potential outcomes of the current picture of American Airlines and what may happen with the pending merger, we can see where things might change.

The amount of miles earned by U.S. airways fliers will not be lost in the merger but will be transferred in a one for one type of exchange into American’s AAdvantage program making it the largest airline miles club in the world with approximately 100 million members.

Another concern fliers have is the difference in in flight products offered.  For example, American Airlines offers meals to fliers on flights less than two hours long, while on U.S. airways the flight must be longer than three and a half hours long before you will receive a meal.  With the merger, American Airlines fliers are quite worried about the amenities they might lose when flying on American.

Flying could also get more expensive, with so many routes under the American flight portfolio, there is a strong possibility for a fare hike on many different routes where there is little to no competition from other airlines.  The main hope for this merger according to executives at American Airlines is to come together and offer more fliers a better experience with seamless travel to more destinations.  It seems with the intended proposed plan that American will actually improve on the delivery of a quality service to a larger group of customers.

In many instances, large mergers such as this often have negative affects on the companies involved and they often lose much of their clientele as the quality of the product or service is diminished   However, in this case it appears that the intended plan would only serve to benefit both groups and their clients, as U.S. Airways customers would see an improvement on departure and arrival times with access to more daily flights, as well as an increase in the quality of the in flight services currently offered on many American flights, and the American airlines customer would see a significant increase in the number of destinations offered along with a much more flexible array of flight times with the increased number of daily flights as well.  It would seem as though this merger would make American Airlines the most competitive and profitable airline in the industry which will be determined for certain when the merger takes place at some point in the projected 3rd quarter of 2013.

 

Works Cited

http://travel.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/travel/if-american-airlines-and-us-airways-merge-what-should-fliers-expect.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

http://www.foxbusiness.com/news/2013/04/15/new-american-airline-ceo-parker-to-get-15-million-in-merger-pay/

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/court-approves-american-airlines-us-airways-merger-2B9117378

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-keyes/what-the-american-airlines-merger-flyer-miles_b_2688076.html