6 Sigma McDonalds Project

6 Sigma Project Wednesday

December 18, 2009

Project number 1

Introduction 2

Quality Management 4

General Layout 5

Observations 19

Process Improvement 19

Follow up 20

Conclusion 21

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Prepared by

Matala Touir

Gohar Fahd

Simon Guienguere

McDonalds Franchise

Introduction

McDonald's Corporation is the largest fast-food operator in the World and was originally formed in 1955 after Ray Kroc pitched the idea of opening up several restaurants based on the original owned by Dick and Mac McDonald. Today, McDon-ald's operates more than 32,000 restaurants in over 118 coun-tries at year-end 2008 and have one of the world's most widely known brand names. McDonald's sales hit $57 billion company-wide and over $25 billion in the United States in 2008 (McDonald Annual Report of 2008).

McDonald’s, the long-time leader in the fast-food wars, faced a crossroads in the early 1990s. Domestically, sales and reve-nues were flattening as competitors encroached on its domain. In addition to its traditional rivals—Burger King, Wendy’s, and Taco Bell—the firm encountered new challenges. Sonic and Rally’s competed using a back-to-basics approach of quickly serving up burgers, just burgers, for time-pressed consumers. On the higher end, Olive Garden and Chili’s had become po-tent competitors in the quick service field, taking dollars away from McDonald’s, which was firmly entrenched in the fast-food arena and hadn’t done anything with its dinner menus to ac-commodate families looking for a more upscale dining experi-ence.

waiting time (before got served) is one of the most im‐portant factors that McDonald’s focused on lately in this fast pace era.

A field samples collected from two of the busiest restaurant in the region. The data was col‐lected based on the time when the customer orders the food until the time the customer get the food on hands. The waiting time in the queue before order‐ing the food was not considered because of its wide variability. The waiting time of sixty cus‐tomers were measured by one operator (to eliminate the Gage variability).

Despite this furious competi‐tion in 2003, McDonald’s served an average of 47 million customers a day. In 2008, the company’s average increased to 58 million customers a day, an increase of about 25 per‐cent in just five years. With this huge number of customer served a day McDonald's like any other company focus on satisfying their customer by providing good food and ser‐vice. McDonald's also targets business customers as a part of their core business. Business customers may stop during the workday and can count on fast service, and consistently good food. Therefore, customers

During this Six Sigma project study, one project methodology followed. This methodology in‐spired by Deming’s Plan‐Do‐Check‐Act Cycle. Which, com‐prising five phases each, bear the acronyms DMAIC (Wikipedia, 2009) DMAIC is used for projects aimed at improving an existing business process.

McDonald’s Corporation 2111 McDonald's Dr Oak Brook, IL 60523

1-800-244-6227

E-mail: [email protected]

I am Lovin’ it!

Ford

MCDONALDS FRANCHISE

We’re on the web www.mcdonalds.com

DMAIC

The DMAIC project methodology has five phases:

• Define high‐level project goals and the current process.

• Measure key aspects of the current process and collect relevant

data.

• Analyze the data to verify cause‐and‐effect relationships.

Determine what the relationships are, and attempt to ensure that all

factors have been considered.

• Improve or optimize the process based upon data analysis using

techniques like Design of experiments.

• Control to ensure

that any deviations

from target are

corrected before

they result in de‐

fects. Set up pilot

runs to establish

process capability,

move on to pro‐

duction, set up

control mecha‐

nisms and continu‐

“Within the individual phases of a DMAIC project, Six Sigma

utilizes many established quality-management tools that are also used

outside of Six Sigma.”

6 SIGMA PROJECT Page 3

Within the individual phases of a DMAIC project, Six Sigma utilizes many established quality-management tools that are also used outside of Six Sigma. The following table shows an overview of the main methods used or can be used (depend on the data collected).

• Analysis of variance

• Business Process Mapping

• Catapult exercise on variability

• Cause & effects diagram

• Chi-square test of independence

and fits

• Control Chart

• Correlation

• Cost-benefit analysis

• CTQ tree

• Quantitative marketing research through use of Enterprise Feedback

• Failure mode and effects analysis

(FMEA)

• General linear model

• Histograms

• Quality Function Deployment

(QFD)

• Pareto chart

• Process capability

• Regression analysis

• Root cause analysis

• Run charts

• Stratification

• Thought process map

Quality Management Tools and Methods used in Six Sigma.


PROJECT NUMBER 1

Define Quality Function Deployment Cost of Qual-ity Trend Analysis Cause-and-Effect Diagrams Proc-ess Maps. Measure Scatterplots Ex-ploratory Plots Time Se-quence Plots Gage Studies for Variables and Attrib-utes Sample Size Determi-nation

Analyze One Variable Analysis Capability Analysis for Variables

Capability Analysis for At-tributes Multivariate Capability Analysis Distribution Fitting Two Sample Comparisons Multiple Sample Compari-sons

Improve Regression Analysis for Measurement Data Regression Analysis for Attribute Data Life Data Regression Analysis of Vari-ance Design of Experiments Screening, Response Sur-face, and Mixture Designs

D-Optimal Designs Inner and Outer Arrays Designs for Categorical Variables Multiple Response Optimiza-tion.

Control Phase II Control Charts Multivariate Control Charts Acceptance Sampling Classification Methods

“DMAIC stands for Define,

Measure, Analyze, Improve, and

Control.”

Page 5

General Layout of Six Sigma

Waiting Time (in minutes)



Obs. # Restau- Restau- Obs. # Restau- Restau- Obs. # Restau- Restaurant 1 2 5 21 3.5 3 41 2.5 2.5 2 2.5 2 22 4.5 2 42 2 2 3 1.5 2.3 23 4.5 2.5 43 3.5 3 4 2 3 24 3 3 44 4 4.5 5 2 2 25 2 4 45 2.5 3 6 4.5 3 26 2.5 4.5 46 2 2 7 2.5 4 27 2 3 47 3 2.5 8 3 4.5 28 3 3.5 48 2.5 3 9 3.5 4 29 2.5 6.5 49 2.5 2

10 2.5 2.5 30 2.5 2.5 50 4 2 11 3 2.5 31 3 3 51 3 3 12 2 2 32 3 3 52 2 2.5 13 2.5 2 33 2 4.5 53 2.5 2 14 4 2.5 34 2.5 2.5 54 3 2.5 15 4.5 3 35 2.5 3 55 3 2 16 3 3.5 36 4 2 56 2.5 2.5 17 2.5 2.5 37 3.5 3 57 3.5 3 18 2.5 2 38 3 2.5 58 3 2 19 2 3 39 3 3 59 3 2.5 20 3 2.5 40 2.5 2 60 2.5 2

Sample Data used in this Study

Table 1: Sample data used for this study (from two restaurants; location A and B)

Current and planned Ford hybrid electric vehicles:

• 2004– Ford Escape

Hybrid

• 2006– Mercury Mariner

• 2008– Ford Fusion/

Mercury Milan

PROJECT NUMBER 1

Cause and Effect Diagram is a diagram that shows the causes of a certain event. Common uses of the C&E diagram are product design and quality defect prevention, to identify potential fac‐tors causing an overall effect. Each cause or reason for imperfection is a source of variation. Causes are usually grouped into major categories to identify these sources of variation. The C&E Diagram is used to understand the relationship between KPIVs and KPOVs. It can help initiate experimental investigations. The KPIVs are inputs to vary and record, the KPOV is a re‐sponse to measure. These experiments, natural or DOE, can be analyzed. The C&E diagram also provides the initial input to the process FMEA. Whenever, a KPOV drifts out of specifica‐tion that is an "Effect". When that happens, the C&E diagram should have listed whatever the "Cause" was, as a KPIV going out of specification. Also, the C&E matrix is used initially in the Define stage to prioritize the issues to focus on. What businesses are looking for are the Pareto issues ‐ where 20% of effort will give 80% of the gain. This is a Strategic Planning adaptation of the C&E diagram ‐ helping organizations identify the aspects of their plan that are most critical to its overall effectiveness. This was used to com‐pare customer requirements with process steps, and identify if the process aligned with cus‐tomer requirements. The outputs from the C&E diagram are then fed into a process FEMA (Effect Analysis) to help assess what might go wrong with the critical aspects of the plan.

Cause & Effect Diagram

Page 6

Improve McDonalds Waiting Time

Man

Materials

Machines

Methods

Measurements

Environment

Meat Quality

Lack of TrainingOld vs New

Random

Food Temperature

Location

Man Machines Materials Fishbone Of McDonalds Waiting Time

Employees number

No Instruction

QualifiedTask vs Multi-tasks

DrinksQuality

Coffee QualityControled Process

Special Orders compexityNot

Optimized

Time to prepare Special Orders

SelfServices

Busy

NotBusy

CustomerProfile

Cause WearUnknownQuality

Time OfCooking

Slow-foodCooking Taste

Pre-cooked Food

FreshFood

Cleaning Process

Figure 1: Cause and Effect Diagram for McDonalds Serving Time Improvement.

PROJECT NUMBER 1 Page 7

FMEA Study

Process Function (Step) Potential Failure Modes (process

defects)

Potential Fail-ure Effects (KPOVs)

SE

V

Potential Causes of Failure (KPIVs)

OC

C

Current Process Controls

DE

T

RP

N

Start

Customer enter the restau-rant long waiting time Bad service 4 Bad service 4 Inspec-

tion 4 64

Cashier Available long waiting time Bad service 4 Bad service 4 Inspec-tion 4 64

Wait to place Order longer than ex-pected Custer leave 5 Bad service 4 Inspec-

tion 4 100

Place Order longer than ex-pected Bad service 4 Bad service 4 Inspec-

tion 4 64

Special drink in the Order? take long time

require one em-ployee to do it.

Take loner time to pre-

pare 6

Not enough employees to do

this order in time.

4 Inspec-tion 5 120

Employee prepare special item

take long time require one em-ployee to do it.

Take loner time to pre-

pare 5

Not enough employees to do

this order in time.

4 Inspec-tion 4 80

Self service drink Customer not able to serve him self

Frustrated customers 3 Do not know

how. 2 self ser-vice 3 18

Meal is ready Took longer time Frustrated customers 6 long waiting time 5 Self ser-

vice 4 120

Customer wait Not hot and taste-less

Less people will drink Cof-

fee 4 long waiting time 4 Self ser-

vice 3 48

Customer served Took longer time Frustrated customers 4 long waiting time 2 Self ser-

vice 2 16

End (Customer leave)

Table 2: FMEA table

According to the FMEA table the strongest point of the process are 1) the Meal is ready (took more than 5 min-utes waiting), 2) the order contain special items (special drink; ice cream, McCafee, Mocha, Expresso, etc…), 3) waiting time to place the order and finally the employee taking too much time preparing special order (items). Spe-cial items require extra work and should be made fresh and most of the time you have one employee take care of one order at the time. The weakest point of the process are the customer self service drink and when the customer served in less than 4 minutes.

According the table 2 the strongest points of the process Figure 2 and Figure 3 show McDonald’s Service Process chart and Service Blueprint respectively.


Figure 2: McDonald’s Service Process Chart

StartCashier

available?Customer enter the Restaurant

Wait to place order

Place order

Payment

Employee prepare special

item

Special drink in the order?

Self service drink Meal is ready?

Customer wait

Customer served

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

YesNo

Yes

Yes

No

End

Figure 3: McDonald’s Service Blueprint


Figure 4: Pareto Chart

RPN 34120 120 100 80 64 64 64 48Percent 4.917.3 17.3 14.4 11.5 9.2 9.2 9.2 6.9Cum % 100.017.3 34.6 49.0 60.5 69.7 79.0 88.2 95.1

Process functionOt

her

Custo

mer wait

Place

Ord

er

Custo

mer en

ter th

e res

tauran

t

Cash

ier Ava

lable?

Emplo

yee p

repar

e spe

cial O

rder

Wait

to pl

ace o

rder

Spec

ial D

rink i

n the

Order

Meal is

read

y?

700

600

500

400

300

200

100

0

100

80

60

40

20

0

RPN

Perc

ent

Pareto Chart of Process function Of McDonlad's Serving Time


After examining the output from the Pareto Chart the following recommendation has been made:

• We have to focus on resolving the issue of number of order per customer (family or-der) and the existing of special items. The special items must be prepared fresh and can’t be prepared in advance. Therefore, McDonald’s employee must prepare each order separate and as consequence the serving time increases from an average waiting time of 3 minutes to more than 5 minutes.

• We have to identify where human error can cause mistakes or slowness to occur, es-pecially in processes that rely on the worker’s attention, skill or experience.

• We have to establish a standard to inspect the special drink preparation, storage, and employee speed and quality of order in order to reduce the risk of have customer waiting too long for their Expresso or Mocha to be ready.

A continuous process improvement and self inspection could eliminate a lot of risk in the process too. Remarks about the main process

The process of McDonald’s serving customer is relatively inadequate during the busy time. The process indicates that customers who have special order or order for more than one person is delayed for more than 5 minutes per serving. Therefore, the issue must be addressed in order to remedy the outcome. The cause of the waiting time greater than five (5) minutes could be caused by one or more factors that were pre-sented in the C&E diagram. We have to establish a new process to understand the rela-tionship between KPIVs and KPOVs and inspect the KPIVs in order to have the appropri-ate KPOVs. The inspection process can help initiate experimental investigations to find the root cause of the waiting more than five minutes. A good way is to use the elimina-tion process in order to find out where are the major KPIVs that cause this variation if the customer’s waiting time. Since the KPOV “waiting time” is a response that easy to measure. Follow up action is to make sure the McDonald’s employees are aware and well informed about the best practice of making of serving customers in a timely manner. Also, educate people about the importance of the 6M factors in the process of serving fast food and making special drinks. For restaurant location that is not busy the customer’s wait time is relatively too small (less than 2 minutes). A waiting time less than two (2) minutes is not good for the busi-ness because this is an indication that the hamburger meat is already cooked and for longer time and it is ready in advance on top of the griller to be served. The disadvan-tage of having the meat on the griller for long time jeopardizes the taste of the ham-burger and hurt the company reputation.

The ideal McDonald’s customer’s waiting time is between 2.5 minutes to 4 minutes where the freshness of the food won’t be sacrificed for the fast service. Follow‐up items:

• Keep the freshness of the food in mind. • Add more grillers if necessary • Successive inspection is done at the next step of the process by the next worker. • Self‐inspection means workers check their own work immediately after doing it. • Source inspection checks, before the process step takes place, that conditions a correct.

Often it’s automatic and keeps the process from proceeding until conditions are right. • Cross training for McDonald’s employees. • For larger order (family order) must have two employees to reduce the waiting time. • Must treat larger order as individual order in order to reduce the waiting time • Pay attention to order that have special drink like (Ice cream, McCafe, Mocha, Expresso,

and so on….) because, this kind of drink require expertise to prepare them and time.


Descriptive Statistics: Restaurant A

Total

Variable Count N CumN Percent Mean SE Mean TrMean

Restaurant A 60 60 60 100 2.8417 0.0932 2.8056

Sum of

Variable StDev Variance CoefVar Sum Squares Minimum Q1

Restaurant A 0.7219 0.5211 25.40 170.5000 515.2500 1.5000 2.5000

N for

Variable Median Q3 Maximum IQR Mode Mode Skewness Kurtosis

Restaurant A 2.5000 3.0000 4.5000 0.5000 2.5 19 0.76 0.12

Variable MSSD

Restaurant A 0.3792

6 SIGMA Page 12

4.03.22.41.6

20

15

10

5

0

McDonald's Location A

Freq

uenc

y

Mean 2.842StDev 0.7219N 60

Histogram (with Normal Curve) of McDonald's Location A

6543210

99.9

99

9590

80706050403020

10

5

1

0.1

Location A

Perc

ent

Mean 2.842StDev 0.7219N 60AD 2.269P-Value <0.005

Normal - 95% CIProbability Plot of McDonald's Location A

Figure 3: Histogram (with Normal Curve) of McDonald’s Location A

Figure 2: Probability Plot of McDonald’s Location A

Examining Figure 1 and 2 plots the data of restaurant in location A is not normally distributed which mean that the McDonalds waiting time does not follow the normal distribution.

The descriptive statistics of restaurant in location A indicates that the aver-age time to serve a customer is 2.8417 minutes and the standard deviation 0.7219. The minimum and the maximum time to serve a customer was 1.5 and 4.5 respectively. The median of this sample is 2.5 minutes.

The skewness of the data is 0.76.

PROJECT NUMBER 1

Descriptive Statistics: Restaurant B Total

Variable Count N CumN Percent CumPct Mean SE Mean TrMean

Restaurant B 60 60 60 100 100 2.855 0.116 2.765

Sum of

Variable StDev Variance CoefVar Sum Squares Minimum Q1

Restaurant B 0.899 0.809 31.50 171.300 536.790 2.000 2.000

N for

Variable Median Q3 Maximum IQR Mode Mode Skewness Kurtosis

Restaurant B 2.500 3.000 6.500 1.000 3 17 1.70 3.76

Variable MSSD

Restaurant B 0.611

Page 13

654321

18

16

14

12

10

8

6

4

2

0

McDonald's Location B

Freq

uenc

y

Mean 2.855StDev 0.8994N 60

Histogram (with Normal Curve) of McDonald's Location B

Figure 4: Histogram (with Normal Curve) of McDonald’s Location B

Here the data distribution is skewed and have tail in the right it looks like a Gamma distribution.

Figure 5: Probability Plot of McDonald’s Location B

PROJECT NUMBER 1

Examining Figure 4 and 5 plots the data of restaurant in location B is not normally distributed which mean that the McDonalds waiting time does not follow the normal distribution.

The descriptive statistics of restau-rant in location B indicates that the average time to serve a customer is 2.855 minutes and the standard deviation 0.899. The minimum and the maximum time to serve a cus-tomer are 2 and 6.5 minutes re-spectively. The median of this sam-ple is 2.5 minutes. The skewness of the data is 1.76. The high skew-ness is due to the assignable cause forcing the customer to wait more than 5 minutes to receive the meal.

“The average time to serve a customer

is 2.855 minutes and the standard deviation 0.899”

Page 14

76543210

99.9

99

9590

80706050403020

10

5

1

0.1

Location B

Perc

ent

Mean 2.855StDev 0.8994N 60AD 3.396P-Value <0.005

Normal - 95% CIProbability Plot of McDonald's Location B

The Individual chart for location A indicates that the process is in control all the observa-tions are inside the LCL and the UCL (scattered around the process mean). However based on our research we find out that McDonalds have policy to control the total wait-ing time for their customer the USL should be less than 5 minutes and LSL should be more than 2 minutes (customer should expect to wait at lest 2 minutes). We chose here UCL=4.5 minutes and LSL=2 minutes in order to show that there are few customers can complain about the process.


554943373125191371

5

4

3

2

1

Observation

Indi

vidu

al V

alue

_X=2.842

UCL=4.667

LCL=1.016

LSL=2

USL=4.5

I Chart of McDonald's in Location A

Figure 6: Individual Chart of McDonald’s Location A

554943373125191371

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

0

Observation

Indi

vidu

al V

alue

_X=2.855

UCL=5.109

LCL=0.601

LSL=2

USL=4.5

1

I Chart of McDonald's Loction B

Figure 7: Individual Chart of McDonald’s Location B

Figure 8: Xbar Chart of McDonald’s Location A

PROJECT NUMBER 1

The Individual chart for location B indicates that the process is in control all the observa-tions are inside the LCL and the UCL (except the point number 29 where the waiting time was 6.5 minutes due to a large family order). All the observation scattered around the process mean. The process showed that few customers their waiting time exceed the USL

Page 16

554943373125191371

5

4

3

2

1

Sample

Sam

ple

Mea

n

__X=2.842

UCL=4.667

LCL=1.016

USL=4.5

LSL=2

Xbar Chart of McDonald's Location A

The xbar chart for location A indicates that the process is in control all the observations are inside the LCL and the UCL (scattered around the process mean).

554943373125191371

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

0

Sample

Sam

ple

Mea

n

__X=2.855

UCL=5.109

LCL=0.601

USL=4.5

LSL=2

1

Xbar Chart of McDonald's Location B

Figure 9: Xbar Chart of McDonald’s Location B


The xbar chart for location B indicates that the process is in control all the observations are inside the LCL and the UCL (except the point number 29 where the waiting time was 6.5 minutes due to a large family order).

554943373125191371

5

4

3

2

1

Sample

Sam

ple

Mean

__X=2.848

UC L=4.595

LC L=1.102

554943373125191371

4

3

2

1

0

Sample

Sam

ple

Range

_R=0.929

UC L=3.034

LC L=0

1

Xbar-R Chart of Restaurant A, ..., Restaurant B

Figure 10: Xbar Chart of both Location A and B

554943373125191371

5

4

3

2

1

Sample

Sam

ple

Mea

n

__X=2.855

UCL=4.529

LCL=1.181

A B

USL=4

LSL=2

Xbar Chart of Waiting Time (minutes by Stage)

Figure 11: Xbar Chart of both Location A and B (by stage)

PROJECT NUMBER 1

Figure 15 shows the data plotted by stage (by location). The process shows that the average time to serve a meal at McDonalds is the same across the two locations. However, the process overall have a little variability because of the uniform policy and procedures across all McDonalds locations. There are few exceptions due to the variability of the customers visiting the restaurant (different customers in each location).

Page 18

4.03.22.41.6

LSL USL

LSL 2Target *USL 4.5Sample Mean 2.84167Sample N 60StDev (Between) 0.775709StDev (Within) 0StDev (B/W) 0.775709StDev (O v erall) 0.721884

Process Data

C p 0.54C PL 0.36C PU 0.71C pk 0.36

Pp 0.58PPL 0.39PPU 0.77Ppk 0.39C pm *

O v erall C apability

B/W C apability

PPM < LSL 16666.67PPM > USL 0.00PPM Total 16666.67

O bserv ed PerformancePPM < LSL 138954.50PPM > USL 16265.33PPM Total 155219.83

Exp. B/W PerformancePPM < LSL 121821.09PPM > USL 10802.79PPM Total 132623.88

Exp. O v erall Performance

B/WOverall

Between/Within Capability of McDonald's Location A

Figure 12: Capability plot of McDonald’s Location A

654321

LSL USL

LSL 2Target *USL 4.5Sample Mean 2.855Sample N 60StDev (Between) 0.803413StDev (Within) 0StDev (B/W) 0.803413StDev (O v erall) 0.899421

Process Data

C p 0.52C PL 0.35C PU 0.68C pk 0.35

Pp 0.46PPL 0.32PPU 0.61Ppk 0.32C pm *

O v erall C apability

B/W C apability

PPM < LSL 0.00PPM > USL 33333.33PPM Total 33333.33

O bserv ed PerformancePPM < LSL 143616.87PPM > USL 20303.80PPM Total 163920.67

Exp. B/W PerformancePPM < LSL 170900.72PPM > USL 33703.18PPM Total 204603.90

Exp. O v erall Performance

B/WOverall

Between/Within Capability of McDonald's Location B

Figure 13: Capability plot of McDonald’s Location B

PROJECT NUMBER 1

The menu at McDonald's typically consists of hamburgers, chicken sandwiches, salads, drinks, shakes, and a recent influx of healthier alternatives. McDonald's also is widely known for their breakfast menu, which consists of sandwiches, pancakes, French toast, hash browns, breakfast, Coffee, and a large variety of drinks.

During the phase of collecting data an assignable cause observed during the food serv-ing. Most customer’s in both restaurant who had a waiting time more than the USL=4.5 minutes they had an item that is considered special order (e.g.: McCafe, Mocha, Es-presso, Ice cream, or Smoothed milk) or a combined order for more than one person. In addition the highest waiting time observed in location B was 6.5 minutes. The reason for this long waiting was due to the fact that this order was for a family of 5 kids and three adults. Also, we observed that most of

Page 19

OBSERVATIONS

PROCESS IMPROVEMENT

1. Add more burger cooking space (larger stoves).

2. Add more frying containers for the French fries

3. Add more workers to prepare each order; do not wait until more collect 4 to 5 order to deliver them to the waiting customer.

4. Separate the process of food preparation.

5. Add more cashier

6. Have the manager present in the store all the time.

7. Have the cashiers after taking orders help in preparing the special drinks (items).

8. Cross training of the employees (train the cook to be able to do different functions in the process).

9. Train the drive thru employ-ees to be able to help in different functions when it is necessary in the busy time.

10. Design a service for family orders.

“Have the manager

present in the store all the

time”

Follow Up and Suggestions Since McDonald's appeals to such a wide audience, it must constantly re-evaluate its menu depending on feedback and market research. In addition, McDonald's process is tacking in consideration its growth and therefore, reducing the serving time (wait time of customers) is one of its major priorities for years to come. McDonald’s is facing a huge challenge of their food quality by competitors (Wendy and Burger King). The tradeoff between the food taste and the time of serving is far from over. Another ma-jor target of McDonald's marketing is to teens. Teens find the value menu especially appealing and McDonald's markets their restaurants as a cool place to meet with their friends and to work. Thus, preparing a cool place for family to enjoy their meal is im-portant too. McDonalds should deal with family order with more emphasis. For exam-ple, after the family order is submitted the kids should get something to get busy (e.i: chocolate bar, Kandy bar, foaming Kandy, etc…) while waiting for their Hamburger and French fries to be ready.

McDonalds is putting more emphasis on the drive thru order. The waiting time for the drive thru order is less than 2 minutes (the time customer places the order to the time receives the order) which is extremely very good.


Serving time risk

After examining the collected data two major problems observed. 1) Food served in less than 2 minutes and 2) food served after more than 5 minutes waiting time.

Serving a meal in less than 2 minutes jeopardize the taste of the hamburger, thus, the only explanation of this fast delivery is that the hamburger is already cooked (for longer time) and waiting on top of the stove to be served. In the opposite if the customers wait for more than 5 minutes is not acceptable in the fast food business where food must be served in timely matter. The ideal McDonald’s customer’s waiting time is between 2.5 minutes to 4 minutes where the freshness of the food won’t be sacrificed for the fast service. In fact, having in mind the risk associated with serving fast-food, the Company’s inter-nal food serving process should be designed to provide reasonable assurance regard-ing the reliability and efficiency of food serving and preparation.

The company should establish a process control over its food preparation process and enforce policies and procedures that:

1. Help employees and management to maintain a certain degree of knowledge of the company philosophy and priority (reasonable detail that fairly reflect the position of the company).

2. Provide reasonable assurance that food is served in timely manner (even for large order). This requires management involvement in the process.

PROJECT NUMBER 1

4. Provide reasonable assurance regarding prevention or timely detection of process mal functioning that might harm the company assets.

5. Provide efficient internal controls which assess the effectiveness of the process, in-cluding the possibility of human error and the circumvention or overriding of controls.

6. Provide a mechanism to reduce the variability of the process across multiple loca-tions.

7. Establish a measurement criteria to test continuously evaluate the process functional-

ity and effectiveness.

Page 21

Conclusion

Despite McDonald's is well known for their maximum customer focus. McDonald’s faces some difficult challenges. Key to its future success will be maintaining its core strengths—an unwavering focus on quality and consistency—while carefully experiment-ing with new options. These innovative initiatives could include a brilliant idea to make the waiting time of their customers an enjoyable time (life experience). In addition, McDonalds should have a separate brand name company responsible for maintaining McDonald’s compliance with safety, quality, environment, and customer’s satisfaction. A brand new branch will improve the company image and will reduce the company risk toward loosing ground for competitors. The company also could look into improving their service toward family orders (large orders).

PROJECT NUMBER 1

[1] http://www.mcdonalds.com/

[2] www.analist.nl/reports/mcdonalds-2008.pdf

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald%27s

[4] www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-71707946.html

[5] https://news.fidelity.com/news/news.jhtml?

cat=MarketBeat&articleid=200911130921MRKTWTCHWSJ_MRKB_30C04424-C2D4-D422-

D354-B056E088919D&IMG=N

[6] http://mcchronicles.blogspot.com/2008/07/wall-street-manhattan-mcdonalds.html

[7] http://blogs.barrons.com/stockstowatchtoday/2009/11/09/mcdonalds-us-sales-stall/

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References


Documents

6 Sigma McDonalds Project