A Detailed Analysis of Quality Management Strategies at McDonald's

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of McDonald's quality management strategies. It begins with an executive summary and an introduction to McDonald's, outlining its background and current operational strategies focused on customer service and quality. The report details the implementation of these strategies, including employee training and technological advancements. It then explores alternative strategies to address potential weaknesses, such as employee turnover and food quality concerns, suggesting improvements like menu diversification and increased presence in Asian markets. The report also examines the contributions of quality management gurus like Deming, Juran, Ishikawa, and Taguchi, highlighting their frameworks and principles relevant to McDonald's operations. Finally, the report concludes with an assessment of McDonald's current position, offering recommendations for continued improvement in quality management practices and competitive advantage within the fast-food industry, supported by relevant references.

Running head: QUALITY MANAGEMENT
Quality Management
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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Executive Summary
The report helps in analysing the different quality management strategies that has been used
by McDonald’s in the present scenario. The different issues and problems that has been faced
by company has been analysed and the different strategies of the company has to be analysed
in an effective manner.
The man aims and purpose of the report is to understand the different contribution of gurus
on the total quality management practices. The different strategies have been described as this
will help company in gaining competitive advantage.
The conclusion is based on position of McDonald’s in the present scenario in comparison to
the different other competitors. The alternative strategies have been implemented along with
contribution of gurus in the quality management process.

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Table of Contents
Introduction and background of McDonald’s............................................................................3
Description of present strategy of McDonald’s.........................................................................3
Implementation of present strategy............................................................................................5
Alternative strategies to overcome problems in McDonald’s....................................................6
Contribution of Gurus................................................................................................................7
Conclusion................................................................................................................................10
References................................................................................................................................12

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Introduction and background of McDonald’s
The report helps in analysis of the different strategies that will help in analysis of
strategy of the quality management applied by McDonald’s. McDonald’s corporation is the
leading food service company that was found by two brothers named Mac and Dick
McDonalds in the year 1940 in California. McDonald’s became popular in Ireland and
O’Connell street. There are more than 74 McDonald’s around the entire world and the main
principles of McDonald’s included cleanliness, Quality, Value and Service has helped
McDonald’s in achieving 100% satisfaction of the customers.
McDonald’s is the largest food chain by revenue wherein they are serving more than
69 million customers and there are approximately more than 37000 outlets in different parts
of the world (Mcdonalds.com, 2018). The revenue generated by the company is more than
US$24.622 billion and the number of the employees working in McDonald’s including all the
outlets are 375,000. There are major competitors of McDonald’s wherein KFC is one such
competitors that has huge importance in the competitive market as well. Furthermore, it can
be seen that there are more than 375,000 individuals who are employed in McDonald’s till
the year 2017 (Chaudary, Zafar and Salman 2015).
Description of present strategy of McDonald’s
The global operations of McDonald’s are aligned in an effective manner around the
world wherein the current strategy of the company is to provide their customers with
exceptional kind of service. The marketing mix of the respective company includes people,
place, product, price and promotion. In the present scenario, it can be seen that McDonald’s
provides exceptional service to the customers to become the fast and quick food chain that
provides high quality food in a clean environment (Kalpakjian and Schmid 2014).

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McDonald’s has currently adopted a strategy that is based on three kind of sections
that includes the importance of customers along with satisfaction provided to the customers.
With the implementation of the information technology, it is essential in nature for
McDonald’s has developed different new ideas as to improve the different operational
activities of the restaurant appropriately. McDonald’s has implemented the management
teams for the inspection of the quality of the food that is sold by them and the control for the
business to be successful in nature. In McDonald’s, the total quality management includes
that all the employees are working on time and they are ready to serve the customers (Sanz-
Calcedo et al. 2015).
In the present scenario, the quality management of McDonald’s includes the
involvement of the employees and there is high morale among the employees who
perform well in the organization as to achieve incentives and the employees are
friendly with the customers as well (Goetsch and Davis, 2014)
Secondly, the entire focus is on the customers that helps the management of
McDonald’s to be unique from the competitors. The large-scale efficiency is
measured by McDonald’s with proper implementation of technological
advancements. The restaurant takes into account the nutrition of the customers and
they provide food to the customers that will help the company in gaining competitive
advantage in an effectual manner (Jiménez-Jiménez et al. 2015)
There is continuous kind of improvement in the different food items that are provided
to the customers by McDonald’s. In order to improve the quality standard,
McDonald’s focuses more on the different training and development programs of the
employees as this helps McDonald’s in providing satisfaction in an effective manner
(Mohammad Mosadeghrad 2014)

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Implementation of present strategy
The present strategy of McDonald’s has been implemented by the company in a
successful manner. The restaurant tries to provide different kind of training to the employees
as to understand the different tastes and preferences of the customers. Furthermore, there is
continuous improvement in the different strategies of quality management wherein it includes
building different kind of products that will make them competitive in nature. It has been
seen that there are different competitors of McDonald’s that includes Wendy’s and Jack in
the Box. McDonald’s tries to understand the different strategies that has been applied by
them as this provides them the different areas wherein focus is required to be done by
McDonald’s.
Furthermore, McDonald’s applied a proper and perfect human resource strategy that
helps the company in meeting with the different requirements of the customers (Sahney
2016). The competency in McDonald’s has helped them in improving the skills of the
employees in an effective manner as this helps them in competing with the market
effectively. However, there are different kind of strengths of McDonald’s that includes self-
service criteria that helps them in saving cost. McDonald’s keeps in mind the regional and
cultural barriers that helps them in providing different kind of food in different countries
(Sallis 2014).
The implementation of total quality management strategy by McDonald’s has helped
the company in creating more opportunities for themselves in the future (Fu et al. 2015). The
training of employees, continuous improvement and customer satisfaction are the main
priority of the company and it helped them in gaining competitive advantage effectively in
the competitive market as well. The implementation of the strategy of McDonald’s has to
understand the different difficulties faced by the firm and they can implement different

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models and approaches of the different gurus of TQM as to generate productivity in an
effective manner.
Alternative strategies to overcome problems in McDonald’s
Furthermore, there are few weaknesses and limitations of McDonald’s that has to be
analysed effectively. McDonald’s has spent a huge amount on the training of the employees.
McDonald’s need to analyse the different needs and preferences of the customers effectively
as this will help them in gaining more competitive advantage in the future (Kiran 2016).
There are different kind of strategies that has to be analysed by McDonald’s as this will help
the company in delivering as per the choices of the customers.
The alternative kind of strategies that can help McDonald’s in overcoming the present issues
are as follows:
McDonald’s needs to reduce the spending of training of the employees in the
organization. Furthermore, McDonald’s need to motivate the employees on the job by
taking care of their different expectations. The company needs to hire employees who
are motivated and loyal to the company as this will help the company in reducing the
employee turnover in an effective manner (Talib and Rahman 2015)
McDonald’s need to improve the different products that are sold by them to their
customers as this will provide them high quality food and the food has to be certified
in nature. There have been different issues relating to the quality of the food that is
supplied by McDonald’s as this will help them in solving such issues (Hazen et al.
2014)
McDonald’s need to develop more healthy choices that are accepted socially and it is
required for McDonald’s to develop menu that will be acceptable by customers and it
is fitting into speedy service model (Jacobs, Chase and Lummus 2014)

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McDonald’s need to increase their presence in the different Asian countries as it can
be seen that McDonald’s is growing faster in China as compared to United States.
Contribution of Gurus
There are different contributions of the gurus with their different quality management
strategies that has been applied by them. Firstly, Dr. W. Edwards Deming is the influential
guru of quality management in United States along with in Japan. Deming has developed a
Shewhart Cycle as the framework that is essential in nature for improving the productivity
and quality of the products (Oakland 2014). There are four steps of improvement in the
quality management principle of Deming that is known as PDCA cycle and in the present era
it is used in assessment of the organizational performance.
Figure 1: PDCA Cycle
(Source: Chaudary, Zafar and Salman 2015)
Furthermore, contribution and principles of Juran’s has been described that helped in
understanding that the main focus of the guru was on managerial aspects in the quality
management. There are three different major components of the theory of Juran’s that
includes the planning of quality, controlling the quality and improvement of the quality.

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Juran’s introduced the ten steps for the quality improvement that includes the improving the
satisfaction of the customers in an effective manner. The ten steps include the following:
Building proper awareness of the opportunity and need for the improvement
Providing proper and accurate training
Carry out different kind of projects to solve different issues effectively
Progress of report (Jaca and Psomas, 2015)
Results of communication
Keep score
Maintain proper momentum by implementing improvement part of systems and
processes of the organization
Organize in an effective manner to achieve the goals
Setting different goals for improvement
Figure 2: Juran Trilogy Diagram
(Source: Jaca and Psomas, 2015)
Ishikawa's contribution and the principle were the Japanese quality guru who helped
in pioneering process of quality management in the Kawasaki shipyards and he was famous

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for development of cause and effect diagrams and the implementation of the seven QC tools.
The seven QC tools are as follows:
Histogram
Control chart
Scatter diagram
Cause and effect diagram
Check sheet
Stratification Chart
Pareto Chart
Figure 3: Fish Bone diagram
(Source: Jaca and Psomas, 2015)
From the above fish bone diagram, it can be seen that it is the effective method and
tool for preventing and reducing mistakes and errors in the entire organization that is related
to quality of the products and services. Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa has introduced the concept that
the next kind of process is the customers and this approach helped in introducing the quality
management circle.

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Dr. Genichi Taguchi is the other guru of quality management who has introduced
different designs for parameters and tolerance. There are three development stages that
include the following:
Design of the system includes the development of functional prototype design along
with determination of the parts, assembly and parts system (Calabrese and Corbò
2015)
Design of parameter includes nominals of the entire system that runs statistically
planned kind of experiments (Herzallah, Gutiérrez-Gutiérrez and Munoz Rosas, 2014)
Design of Tolerance helps in dealing with the tightening of the tolerances along with
upgrading different materials in an effective manner (Dale 2015)
From the above, it can be analysed that the gurus of the quality management have
contributed a huge amount in the different kind of practices of the quality management. The
gurus have provided brief introduction on the different kind of quality management strategies
that will help in company in solving the different issues related to quality management in the
organization. From the above analysis on contribution of gurus, it can be seen that Deming
contributed and emphasized on process and the dominant factors were control of the
variation.
Furthermore, Juran contributed towards the quality management practices wherein the
main focus was on people and the dominant factors were fitness for the purpose.
Furthermore, it was seen that Ishikawa mainly focused on value led theories and the main
dominant factors were different quality practices and circles on quality management of the
different companies.

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Therefore, it can be summarised that all the gurus shared the emphasis that were
common in nature and they focused on continuous improvement of the different services that
are provided by them in order to meet the different requirements of the customers.
Conclusion
Therefore, from the entire discussion it can be concluded that strategic quality
management plan of McDonald’s has positioned themselves as the largest food restaurants in
the world. The quality management strategies that has been applied by McDonald’s is
effective in nature, however there are few changes that is required to be made in the different
areas as this will help the company in gaining competitive advantage in the entire market.
It has been seen that McDonald’s focuses more on the different expectations of the
customers and benchmarking of the company as well. However, there can be different
implementation of strategies that can be adopted by McDonald’s in meeting the expectations
of the customers and the food quality has to be checked properly as this will help them in
increasing their sales. McDonald’s need to open different outlets in other countries as well as
this will help them in becoming best in comparison to other food chains in the market.
Therefore, it can be concluded and summarized that all the quality management gurus
focused on a common kind of goal that was relating to the quality management of the entire
organizations and this helped the companies in following such strategies to overcome
different issues relating to the quality of the products and services that are produced and
delivered by them to the different customers.

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References
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implementation in service organisations. Total Quality Management & Business
Excellence, 26(7-8), pp.719-732.
Chaudary, S., Zafar, S. and Salman, M., 2015. Does total quality management still shine? Re-
examining the total quality management effect on financial performance. Total Quality
Management & Business Excellence, 26(7-8), pp.811-824.
Dale, B., 2015. Total quality management. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Fu, S.L., Chou, S.Y., Chen, C.K. and Wang, C.W., 2015. Assessment and cultivation of total
quality management organisational culture–an empirical investigation. Total Quality
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Goetsch, D.L. and Davis, S.B., 2014. Quality management for organizational excellence.
Upper Saddle River, NJ: pearson.
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Herzallah, A.M., Gutiérrez-Gutiérrez, L. and Munoz Rosas, J.F., 2014. Total quality
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Palestinian industrial SMEs. Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, 25(5-6),
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Jaca, C. and Psomas, E., 2015. Total quality management practices and performance
outcomes in Spanish service companies. Total Quality Management & Business
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Sallis, E., 2014. Total quality management in education. Routledge.

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