Burgers and the Fast Food Industry - Research Paper Example

?Recommending a Project Management Plan As given in the instructions, a new project needs to be selected for this assignment. Therefore, thechosen project is designing promotional billboards for a new burger for XYZ Corporate. Burgers and fast food industry are booming all over the world and billions of dollars are spent in buying and eating burgers. The billboard’s size chosen for this task is 20x15 feet, and a total of 12 billboards need to be designed and installed. For this task, project scope is presented in a customized fashion, directly suited for the purpose of the project. The project has been assigned by XYZ Corporate and they have a long history of fast food restaurants (sit in and take away). Most of their outlets operate in posh areas, which is why the rates are a little higher than in other fast food restaurants. One thing that goes in their favor is that when it comes to pricing, they can sell at a higher rate due to their brand loyalty. Customers love the taste of their burgers and they pay extra to taste their delicious burgers. But for this project, a glitch came up when it was discovered that market campaign must also attract health conscious people; veggie burgers and rolls will also need to be included in the advertisement. A budget of under $60,000 has been allocated to the project manager and the team for billboard advertisements. Cost saving will be made as the in-house designer will be employed by the PM for designing the boards. The main cost is renting the billboard space for the first week of the sales. It is a very competitive project where all the revenues need to be regenerated within the first week from the sales of the product. This is very much possible by quality advertisement and most importantly, the taste or success of the new cheese steak burger. All appropriate pricing, budgeting and trade off analysis have been incorporated to deliver a quality finish to the project. Project Scope Project scope is the sum of all works needed to be accomplished in order to achieve the scope of the project. It would be better to define the scope of the project, namely: products, services and results (Kerzner, 2009). For this task, the new burger flavor is a steak burger with a different cheese flavor, and the XYZ Corporate needs the help of a project manager to promote this product so that it would constitute as a lucrative addition to their burger variety. The product here is the burger. The service that needs to be provided is designing of billboards and the end result that the XYZ Corporate is looking for is an increase in the sale of the new item. The Learning Curves Learning curve or the experience curve plots the learning dexterity against time spent in learning something. For this project, the learning curves will be refined as the company already owns a successful food business. They are only introducing a new food item (burger). The existing leering curves determine the future shape of the project’s performance. That is why it can be easily predicted that learning curves will give positive economic output against the time spent. The chef who brought the idea of the new cheese burger to the board room already has the experience of making those burgers; however the other kitchen staff needs to learn the perfect combination of the stake and cheese to make the project learning curves smoother. Quality Management Plan for the Project Overall quality management plan for this project revolves around the production of the food items (cheese burgers and shakes). The company already has a good reputation about the quality of its food; the project manager only needs to maintain the standards already set out by the company. However, the quality of the new cheese flavor will be of much concern as the project manager will be the one bearing the prime responsibility for the quality of the cheese. Moreover, there is a limit to the fat content of the burger, if the content goes over the limit of fat in a burger, then the quality will certainly drop down. The fat content limit is the limit set out by the company cuisine rules. The Quality Movement The quality movement in businesses is directly related to continuous improvement. Capacity to respond to change while maintaining the quality of the product is the biggest challenge of the quality movement. And the project manager is determined to live up to the challenge and maintain the standards. The project manager’s team has been handpicked by checking for innovative ideas among candidates. The candidates with the best innovative ideas have been out on this project to design the billboards as well as generate sales of the new food items. Other than the continuous improvement, breakthroughs in sales are also expected of this team. Quality Management Concepts Along with cost and schedule management, quality management holds the same rank for a project manager. Quality policy, quality objectives, quality assurance, quality control, quality audit and quality program plan are the six basics concepts of quality management that the project manager will incorporate for the billboard design. All these concepts will be carried over to the sale phase (the first week). The policy for quality management is to comply with the legal requirements of the billboard design. Moreover, for the sales of new cheese burgers, the policy for quality control will be to comply with the federal food quality requirements. The quality objective is to score over seven out of ten on the customer feedback questionnaire. The Cost of Quality There are certain guidelines that the company billboards need to follow; this is one cost of quality that the company will have to bear. The legal framework for billboard designs specifies certain colors and props that cannot be used as they can cause lethal distraction for the moving traffic. Flashy lights that can produce a glare in the eyes of the onlooker cannot be used for lighting the billboard. There are certain features in outdoor advertisement that the company can use to make the billboard more attractive but there are cost of quality and legal constraints that prevent the company from pursuing them. Implementing Six-Sigma Six-Sigma is a quality initiative and it means to reduce defects that are defined by the customers. For this project of designing billboards to market burgers, the customers will provide their feedback/complaints about the taste and price of the new item. This will be taken care of during the first week of the sales. However, for the advertisement procedure, there isn’t much information available to the project manager to correct defects in the billboard designs. Effectiveness of the advertisement can be the major defect in designing the billboard. By implementing six-sigma to take care of this defect, the outdoor advertisement will be made more effective. To make this happen, the Six-Sigma team will be formed that will look at the designs and locations of the billboards from various cross functional aspects. The Pricing The pricing section is the most difficult aspect of the whole project. Designing billboards isn’t a very technical job; it involves some smart creativity. On the other hand, pricing portion is extremely difficult and demands a lot of market research. For promotional campaign, the price needs to be mouthwatering; it should grab the attention of the onlookers instantly. To sell a total of 10,000 burgers in the first week, the price for the stake burger and shake meal is $5.99. The reason for including the shake with the steak is because of the flavor combination the cheese makes with the shake. The chefs have specifically chosen this cheese flavor which creates a very different flavor than what people are used to eating. For the first week of the sales, there is only a profit of $0.2 per sale. So for the first week, a total profit of $2000 is expected (that’s the target). But the other side of the project is the actual promotion of the product via billboards. Cost Control Cost control problems arise when the cost of the project isn’t compatible with the company policies (Kerzner, 2009). But for this project, a very careful approach towards cost control methodology has been adopted and nothing will go out of line or even require twisting or turning the company policies of XYZ Corporate. Various cost control methods incorporated for billboard design and pricing of burgers for the 1st week have been scheduled via computer software. For this, the custom made software of the company has been used, that takes care of all variables and keeps the cost and strategies within boundaries. Cost control problems also arise when resources are added to the project after budgeting. Estimating Techniques to be employed Estimates are not created by just one person; it requires a team effort. Agile teams specifically pay attention to estimating (Cohen, 2005). For this project, the whole team looked into the history of the fast food business maintained by the XYZ Corporate. Historical guidance will be the main technique for estimation. Moreover, billboard planning and estimation have been done with the local billboard space managers. All estimations have remained under the budget radar so far, therefore, no real estimation problems have been faced yet. After the presentation, estimations about pricing and the next advertisement campaign will be made depending on the market and customer response. A quick estimation is that the competitors will definitely try to get even by introducing a new food item that is why no further estimations can be made at this point. Summary of trade-off Analysis The simplest definition of a trade-off is losing one factor (item/input) in pursuit of getting another item (or to effect quality) (Wikipedia contributors, 2012).The decisions made for this project have been carefully constructed and will be implemented as planned. Full comprehension of both the upside and the downside of the project have been discussed. The upside is the market advertisement of the product (special cheese burger), whereas the downside is too much investment in designing and installing billboards. A total of 12 billboards need to be installed at visible places across the city. Quality Initiative Process (Diagram) Works Cited Cohn, M. (2005). Agile Estimating and Planning. Addison-Wesle. Kerzner, H. (2009). Project management: A systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley and Sons. Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). “Trade-off”. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade-off Read More