Production Management Essay

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Fast Food Franchise

Both Burger King and McDonalds seek to have a high level of efficiency in their layouts. There are different elements to a fast food layout, in general, those being the front of house, the production area and the storage areas. There is also a division between building, parking and Drive-Thru as well, but mostly this will focus on the interior.

McDonalds dedicates the most production space to the service area, both in-house and drive-thru. This allows the company to process customers quickly, and efficiently. Easier service items are handled by the counter staff. The kitchen is dense, and relatively small compared with the front of house area. The menu is somewhat limited into a handful of categories, and some things are pre-prepared. Burgers are pre-cooked and then assembled to order. Storage space is generally limited, and the company presumably receives regular shipments of supplies to allow this. The front of house area is fairly large, but is usually busy during peak times, justifying this much dedication to space.

At Burger King, the food production area seems bigger than at McDonalds, relative to the size of the building. By the looks of things Burger King is not as efficient, despite having a relatively compact menu. There is more storage space as well. However, these are shades of difference. To compare these two vs. A different type of restaurant, they are actually pretty similar in the way that they divide space. In particular there is a clear separation between the three areas, and there is heavy emphasis on the counter area in both restaurants. There is ample customer seating, indicating both have a strong customer orientation. Differences in their menus and production techniques appear to necessitate different layouts of the kitchen, with McDonalds being more compact and efficient of the two.

The customer focus at each is positive. These are designed for a high level of efficiency and large customer throughput. Counter space is important, production space less so. Significant space is earmarked for the drive-thru. The differences are subtle between them, relative to the layout design differences among restaurants in other categories.

Part 2.

One company that sells a product is Apple. They manufacture their consumer electronics in China, and then use FedEx to deliver them to customers, either directly when the customer has purchases online, through a company store or through a third party vendor. The supply chain, however, has been a challenge for the company. Forgetting about the ethical issues with Foxconn, Apple has been challenged with stockouts on many major product launches, and while the company spins this as positive, from a production and supply chain management point-of-view there is nothing good about stockouts.

Many observers feel that, despite the stockouts, Apple remains one of the best-performing companies in the world with respect to its supply chain. The strengths of the supply chain lie in the ability to produce a high volume of goods, relatively low defect rates and high input quality (Ellinor, 2013). By using FedEx, delivery times and transparency are also at a high level -- consumers can literally track the progress of their shipment, something that no other consumer electronics company can offer, but that is more a strength of FedEx than it is of Apple.

The Apple supply chain is valuable because they are able to take the specs that Apple gives them and execute. Moreover, many suppliers can work with Apple to develop new technologies. This is perhaps the most important element in a great supply chain -- when your suppliers are able to work with you to give you competitive advantage. Apple might not have this anymore, but for a few years they excelled at getting superior, cutting edge components for their products.

Deficiencies lie with the ethical issues the company has faced, the stockouts and some conflict of interest issues, as Apple has often had to source critical parts from its competitors. I would look to find independent third-party contractors for parts otherwise obtained from the likes of Samsung, as a first move, rather than putting money into competitor's hands and ceding intellectual property. The other recommendation that I would make is to build a more diversified, robust supply chain so that product launches do not result in stockouts, and that if there are problems with a vendor that there are other vendors who can readily be substituted.

3. The surgeon case illustrates a trade-off between efficiency and quality. One suggested improvement would be to analyze the demand for surgeries.

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Right now, the doctors are scheduled for surgeries every morning -- is there enough to demand to justify that? If there is any excess capacity, the doctors could be more effective elsewhere. So surgical scheduling should be aligned with demand expectations, which means the manager should gather and estimate demand data.

The second suggestion for improving throughput is to add capacity to the system. This means either adding another surgeon (the surgical space is unused in the afternoons) or adding assistance for non-surgical tasks so that the surgeons can spend more time actually performing surgeries (C&K, 2003).

The theory of constraints is that there are specific things that hold back production from its potential, often bottlenecks or arbitrary limitations on activities. Right now, the idea that surgeries can only be performed in the morning is a constraint, and the use of only two surgeons such that surgeries cannot be performed in the afternoon is another constraint. By eliminating these constraints, throughput can be increased (MindTools, 2014). There are other constraints as well, but many of those simply represent the tradeoff between throughput and quality of care. You could technically eliminate breaks in between surgeries to increase throughput, but that would impact on the quality of care, so would be a sub-optimal option.

A manager needs to recognize when an option is going to have a negative impact and when it is not. Not all quests for better efficiency come at the expense of quality. What this example illustrates is that a manager should look at all of the possible solutions, because there might be one that does not represent such a tradeoff. In this case, there appears to be several options for increasing throughout without adversely affecting quality. They might cost more, but sometimes money is a constraint in the real world. If money is a constraint the manager will need to determine what is more important -- quality or throughput because something will have to be sacrificed to find the right balance.

5. The foot in the door technique is a sales technique whereby you establish a relationship with perhaps the purchase of something small, and then increasingly ask for more and bigger purchases later on. The idea is simply that the salesperson needs to establish some sort of bond with the buyer in order to win the sale. The bond is part interpersonal and part just a matter of trust. Thus, the first sale might be something small, rather than a large purchase. This creates the relationship, and from there the relationship can grow to much bigger sales. But it all starts with getting the foot in the door. This is a metaphor from the days of door-to-door salesmen, where literally you wanted to get your foot in the door to prevent the customer from closing the door on you. Once you had your foot in the door, you could work your pitch.

The foot in the door strategy is common in sales, and has been adapted to a number of different settings. The entire concept of the loss leader is an application of the foot in the door strategy. Grocery stores will put staple items on sale, advertise the sale, and get people to come in for the great deal. Once in the store, they are much more likely to do just do the rest of their shopping, or at the very least to indulge in some sort of impulse buy at the checkout. Again, this is a fairly literal application of foot in the door because none of those sales occurs if the customer is not enticed to enter the store in the first place.

The foot in the door technique is used in non-sales situations as well. Ideas are propagated this way. A politician can introduce a horrible idea by introducing a soft version of it. When you evaluate policies that are enacted and how they are sold to the public, there is almost always a foot in the door strategy. Find a trigger for someone to accept one thing you are saying. Once that happens, they might listen to another thing, and another. By the end of the conversation, you might believe a lot of things that, had they been introduced from the outset, might have ended the conversation. This is even how con artists work -- they get their foot in the door, gain your trust, and then they do what they do after that......

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