QHA304, Semester 1: Quality Management at McDonald's Report

This report delves into the concept of quality management, emphasizing its significance within organizations and illustrating its practical application through a detailed case study of McDonald's. The report begins by defining quality management and its importance, then provides a brief introduction to McDonald's, highlighting its founding principles and global presence. It examines the concept of business organizations and explores the various components of quality management, including quality control, planning, assurance, and improvement. The report analyzes McDonald's quality management practices, focusing on quality control measures, service standards, and the role of employees and food quality. It also discusses the advantages and disadvantages of implementing quality systems, offering recommendations for improvement and concluding with a summary of key findings. The report references various sources to support its analysis and provides a comprehensive overview of quality management in the context of a real-world business.

Running Head: QUALITY MANAGEMENT
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Quality Management
McDonald’s
(Student Details: )
1/8/2020

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Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Quality and Management...........................................................................................................2
McD brief introduction..........................................................................................................2
Business organizations concept..............................................................................................2
Quality management at McD.................................................................................................3
Quality control at McD..........................................................................................................4
Quality control.......................................................................................................................4
Quliaty service.......................................................................................................................4
Recommendations......................................................................................................................5
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................6
References..................................................................................................................................7

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Introduction
This report is based on reviewing the previous lectures on quality and management. In
general, Quality Management (QM) refers to a method that is used to ensure that all of the
activities which are necessary to develop, design and implement any product or service are
efficient as well as effective in relation to the system and thereby performance. In this
context, researching the relation between quality and management is necessary as every
organization should serve quality products and services to its customers (Goetsch & Davis,
2014). With this paper, the importance of quality will be explained while using a real-life
example. This example has been chosen as McDonald's (McD) for researching quality and
management for the betterment of society (McDonalds, 2020). This discussion will contain
the advantages and disadvantages of working towards a quality system. In this way, the
business research report will explore real-world examples of McD in order to demonstrate
knowledge and understanding regarding quality management into global businesses. Thus,
with different skills like cognitive, professional, practical, transferable and key skills, the
summary will be presented at the end of this discussion.
Quality and Management
McD brief introduction
The chosen firm McD is a well-known fast-food company based in America, it is founded in
the year 1940 (McDonalds, 2020). It is worth knowing that McD was first operated by
Richard and Maurice McDonald in the United States. One of the reasons behind this
organization’s success is its consistent quality with a better system for executing business. In
addition to that, McD is the globe’s leading foodservice organization having four key
principles like value, service, cleanliness, and most importantly quality. Thus, the
combination of such four principles made the organization achieve 100% of their customers’
satisfaction. Besides, this business has been operated based on particular specifications for
their food products, raw things while being responsible for the system implementation for
ensuring the highest quality on the food all across the global restaurants (McDonalds, 2020).

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Business organizations concept
In general, a business organization is an entity focused on carrying on commercial entities
while offering products and services, for meeting the basic needs of the consumers (Hamilton
& Webster, 2018). It is worth knowing that different types of business organizations are
limited partnership, sole proprietorship, general partnership, Limited Liability Company, S
corporation and corporation (Forbes, 2015). In this way, business organizations can be
explained as to how businesses are typically structured as well as how their structure assists
them in achieving their goals. Thus, different categories of business organizations can be
related to how any business is owned, operated and established in the real-world (Priede,
2012).
Quality management at McD
It is well-aware that QM is the management of business activities as well as functions that are
involved in the determination of quality policy and thereby its implementation in reality
(Priede, 2012). At McD, QM always ensures that products and services are presented of the
highest quality consistently. In this context, quality management is having some major
components to be considered at any organization (Brigthubpm, 2019). These four key
components of QM are as follows:
 Quality control
 Quality planning
 Quality assurance
 Quality improvement (DL Goetsch, 2014).
While talking about quality and management at business organizations like McD, the aim of
QM is not only to emphasize the product as well as service quality but the organization also
focuses on exploring different ways to achieve an effective QM. Likewise, McD is doing
excellence in the field of fast food service worldwide since long with the help of proper
quality management while focusing on four aforementioned components (McDonalds, 2020).
In addition to that, as per the ISO (international standard for quality management), key
principles of QM are as follows:
 Benchmarking
 Customer focus
 Continuous improvement

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 Leadership (Lupo, 2009).
 People’s involvement
 Process approach
 The factual approach to decision-making
 System approach towards management
 Mutually advantageous supplier relations
Quality control at McD
It has been found that McD is having a set of strong management teams for the purpose of
inspection of food items quality and control for effective business development. At McD,
both the quality control and quality service are suitably checked by the organizational
management team (Mok et al., 2013). In this way, the QM team often deals with quality
control and quality service with the proper QM techniques (McDonalds, 2020).
Quality control
In this context, the QM team always makes sure fulfilling the basic criteria for the McD
operations. Thus, McD’s QM team listens to while getting feedback from their customers so
that their business can be further improved (Lupo, 2009). Modern researchers have found that
McD is having a relationship with this scientific community for providing safe as well as the
best food to the societies (Keillor, 2013). While doing QM, the organization always tried to
find solutions for some special health issues among children and hence prepared a hygienic
food for the whole world. By seeing at the organizational success and business development
of McD, it can be said that business organizations should never compromise with the quality
of their products and thereby quality control (Keillor, 2013). Thus, quality management is
one of the reasons behind the successful business development of McD worldwide. In this
context, quality inspection is usually done on all McD franchises and hence it is a huge part
of their business strategies. Moreover, McD also uses the HACCP system which stands for
Hazard Analysis and Critical Control and thereby McD is able to provide quality, hygienic
and tasteful food items to their consumers (Heinberg et al., 2017). In this case, the QM team
of the McD always looks at the diet contents as well as key nutrients in each food item so that
quality management can be successful. In this way, the QM team at McD works upon the
health-related problems which are typically handled by the team in a way that nutrition is
properly controlled for the future business development and growth (Goetsch & Davis, 2014).

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Quality service
Here, in the context of business organization McD, quality service can further be sub-divided
into three major categories as follows:
 The fast-food restaurant: in this context, the QM team ensures that McD restaurants
are clean, sparking and tidy from the perspective of presenting good quality to the
customers. Besides, the team also tries to offer accurate, fast as well as friendly
services (Forbes, 2015).
 The employees: in this context, McD’s QM team works upon the neat dresses,
reporting and leaving timings and cleanliness of their employees. In this way, the
quality management team of McD should work so as to acquire maximum benefits
(Davies, 2016).
 The food: most importantly, McD’s quality management team works and looks for
the quality of some major food areas such as vegetables, bun, meat and many more. In
this way, all food items should always be of good quality and up to the ISO standard
(Christensen, 2015).
While talking about McD, quality management is essential for fulfilling the mission of
serving safe as well as delicious food to global customers on a daily basis. It is because, for
food restaurants, two factors are critically important (Hamilton & Webster, 2018). These two
factors are food safety and food quality as they are at the core of everything in such
businesses. In addition to that, for McD, food quality is the heart of the business which needs
the firm to constantly evolving the food while setting higher goals for the overall taste and
quality. Moreover, even if the organization is about to offer new food items, they must work
over its quality rather only on creativity and taste (DL Goetsch, 2014). In this way, McD is
successfully doing their business altogether with the suppliers while driving towards constant
quality improvement (Forbes, 2015). Furthermore, there are so many financial benefits of
practicing desired QM strategies like reduced costs, improved return on investment and
returns on sales with an ability to change greater rather than competitive product prices. It has
been found that QM at McD successfully demonstrated an increase in the reputation and
brand image as a quality business organization while also developing new innovations by
improving access to international food markets (Davies, 2016).

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Recommendations
Based on the analysis in the context of quality management at McD, for business growth and
development, there are some future recommendations as follows:
 As mentioned above, the success of business organizations like McD depends on
quality management over the decades. Hence, the company should continue to work
great in quality excellence and management (Christensen, 2015).
 The company should enhance reliability in its business operations in order to execute
the services efficiently, constantly, exactly and effectively (Ryan , 2017).
 As per the information, past incidents at McD suggest that any compromise in quality
of the food products caused a huge loss to the company hence the company should
critically focus on the business growth and expansion while pursuing the quality
excellence (Snyder, 2010).
 In addition to that, McD should use the six sigma approach as the QM strategy for
seeking improvement in the quality of their products while removing the causes of
basic errors as well as minimizing variability within various business processes.
 In this way, by focusing on customers’ needs and changed demands, McD should use
the Shewhart cycle including Act, Plan, Check, and Do for further quality
improvement (Toni, 2011).
Conclusion
In whole, the in-depth analysis of quality management at McD suggests that this business
organization is operating as a profitable organization all across the world. In addition, the
paper has successfully explored the meaning, significance and future scope of the Quality
Management concept. For doing so, the discussion has successfully used a real-life example
of McDonald's. Based on this analysis, it can be said that QM is an important concept which
is always applied in a business organization’s daily operations. This report has found that QM
principles must always be supported at every level of the business organization so as to be
effective for improving quality with throughput the low-level to the highest-level quality
management. This discussion has found that QM is essential to every functional area of an
organization while comprising information systems, production departments, marketing, and
finance. In a nutshell, with the help of studying QM for McD, it is suggested that the QM
process always begins with understanding customers’ needs and wishes so that quality

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products and services can be produced on the basis of the customers’ feedbacks which fosters
business growth in the long-term.

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References
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https://www.brighthubpm.com/methods-strategies/72443-theories-in-total-quality-
management-tqm/ [Accessed 24 September 2019].
Christensen, C.M..R.M.E.a.M.R.., 2015. What is disruptive innovation. Harvard Business
Review, 93(12), pp.44-53.
Davies, , 2016. The International Business Environment: A Handbook for Managers and
Executives. 1st ed. london: CRC press.
DL Goetsch, S.D., 2014. Quality management for organizational excellence: Introduction to
total quality.
Forbes, 2015. Why Is It Important For McDonald's To Focus On Quality? [Online] Available
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mcdonalds-to-focus-on-quality/#287e6a9e2488 [Accessed 2020].
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Hamilton, L. & Webster, , 2018. The International Business Environment. 4th ed. london:
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Heinberg, M., Ozkaya, H.E. & Taube, M., 2017. The influence of global and local iconic
brand positioning on advertising persuasion in an emerging market setting. Journal of
International Business Studies, 48(8), pp.1009-22.
Keillor, B., 2013. Understanding the Global Market: Navigating the International Business
Environment. 1st ed. england: praeger.
Lupo, L., 2009. [Best Practices] The Quality 'Cs' of McDonald's. [Online] Available at:
https://www.qualityassurancemag.com/article/-best-practices--the-quality--cs--of-mcdonald-
s/ [Accessed 2020].
McDonalds, 2020. Food Safety and Quality. [Online] Available at:
https://corporate.mcdonalds.com/corpmcd/scale-for-good/our-food/foodsafety.html

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[Accessed 2020].
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Priede, J., 2012. Implementation of quality management system ISO 9001 in the world and its
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Ryan , T., 2017. Was the Reason for McDonald’s Success Because They Created a Better
Hamburger or Because They Created a Better System for Their Business? [Online] Available
at: http://www.gr-us.com/was-the-reason-for-mcdonald%E2%80%99s-success-because-they-
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