Chapter 1 - Operations Management

Throughout all of human history, mankind has searched for the ultimate food. To our enjoyment, in 1950, the world was given the answer: Whataburger. Whataburger has taken the hearts of Americans by storm by by serving classic southern style burgers, fries, and shakes. Despite it’s humble beginnings in Corpus Christi, the franchise now boasts over 750 locations and has even secured the 2016 title of “Best Burger in America”. In an effort to understand why this small burger chain became so successful evaluating this legendary business in three different aspects: price, quality, and customer service.

Operations management refers to all levels of an organisation and how best to efficiently convene, fund, maintain and maximise its services and/or operations, both internal and external. The core goal/objective of operations management it to maximise outputs while reducing and minimising the inputs required to achieve the desired results.

With the demand of fast food on the rise, two rival competitors continue the argument of “Who is better, Zaxby’s or Chick-Fil-A?” Zach McLeroy and Tony Townley founded Zaxby’s in 1990, almost forty-five years after Dan T. Cathy established his first Chick-Fil-A dwarf house in 1946. Since these entrepreneurs started their businesses, their restaurants have popped up all across the country. Both share many similarities while still keeping their individuality, and each company brings in a tremendous amount of revenue each year. Typically, Zaxby’s is open twelve hours a day, seven days a week; Chick-Fil-A’s normal work day is sixteen hours, but they are closed on Sundays. Each restaurant provides both drive through

According to Investopedia ULC (2012), " Operations management is concerned with converting materials and labor into goods and services as efficiently as

The fast food industry in the US is witnessing the increasingly fierce competition among Chipotle, Chick-fil-A, McDonald’s, Jimmy’s egg and KFC. In addition, consumers increasingly favored foods clean and healthy. Foreseeing this need, numerous popular fast food restaurants sprung up promptly. The first Chipotle restaurant is opened in 1993 by Steve Ells in Colorado. On the contrary, McDonald’s is founded by McDonald’s family with a long history as well as one of the oldest brand in America. My paper will explain the similarities and differences in their three characteristics between Chipotle and McDonald’s, both of them are large enterprises in the fast food industry which have large market shares. Then, I also give opinions to differentiate

• explain operations as an organizational functional area; i.e. to present a list of the areas covered by the operations management function, the problems and decisions faced in these areas and the methods and models for approaching these problems;

In a strategic move for marketing purposes, taco bell was able to explain the ingredients used in their tacos. Their strategy was due in part by having a crisis management team. Crisis management team are groups of people put in place to deal with unexpected events that can harm the image of the business (Bethel University, 2013). The plan developed

Gioe Melaney is the general director of Southern Toro – a subsidiary company included in the distribution system of Toron Coporation in Galveston, Taxas.

James, T. (2011) defines Operations Management as the management of the processes which aid production of goods and or services. This implies that all production activities must be coordinated well to ensure a lean process of resource management is adopted.

Operations Management in an organisation is repsonsible for managing and in making decisions concerning the activities that convert inputs into outputs , that is goods and services. This covers both short term actvities as well as longer term activities to meet strategic goals. Inputs can be the raw materaials need to manufacture goods such as furniture or the computers needed to create a service like online shopping site. Operation management’s role is to make decisions to improve how operation activities function, for example, to improve the final quality of the output or to change production methods to be more efficient in terms of cost and in time.

Operations management (OM) is that phase of an organization where inputs are put into operations to acquire required output (services) without compromising on quality. In other words operations management is also described as combining and transforming various resources in the operations sub-system into value added services in line with formulated policies of the organization. (Kumar and Suresh, 2009)

3.1 For each hotel, what is the role of technology and the role of operations

Operations management focuses on managing the processes of producing and distributing products and services. Operations activities often include product creation, development, production and distribution. It deals with all operations within the organization. Related activities include managing purchases, inventory control, quality control, storage, logistics and evaluations. The nature of how operations management is carried out in an organization depends very much on the nature of products or services in the organization, for example, retail, manufacturing, wholesale, etc.

The company researched for the purpose of this paper is McDonald 's. This company 's history dates back since 1940 when Mac and Dick McDonald initially opened McDonald 's BBQ restaurant located in San Bernardino, CA. In 1948 they shut down the restaurant, just to reopen it as a self-service drive-in restaurant. According to About McDonald’s (2012), their menu included only 9 items, such as: milk, coffee, soft drinks, cheeseburger, hamburger, potato chips, and a slice of pie. Potato chips were then replaced by French fries. The history of this company is significantly market by Ray Kroc, who in 1954 at a visit to McDonald 's in San Bernardino decides to have a franchise of McDonald 's. A year later, in 1955, he opens his first restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois. The franchising plan allowed growth and by 1965 there were more than 700 restaurants across United States. McDonald 's

Operations management is generally described as the planning, arrangement, and control of activities that change raw materials or an organization's input into finished products and services. The overall activities covered by operations management include the creation, development, manufacture, and distribution of products. The concept also relates to various activities such as inventory control, controlling purchases, quality control, logistics, storage, and evaluation ("Operations Management in McDonalds", n.d.). Since operations management covers the entire operations in an organization, it mainly focuses on the efficiency and effectiveness of the firm's processes.