Lean Management Principles in McDonalds - Essay Example

The increase in consumer demand for quality and fierce competition has created a significant impact on fast food markets. Toyota Motor Company was the first business corporation to extensively develop the concept of lean management in the late 1970s. The occurrence of global recession has created a detrimental effect on organizations to reduce costs. McDonald’s has set their sights on nullifying the issue by the implementation of lean management. A set of key practices have been utilized by Mcdonald's to deliver effective service to the customers. Overproduction, inventory, motion, wasting time, defectives and transport are the seven sources of waste that are required to be eliminated.

Overproduction is one of the sources that are eliminated by McDonald's by introduction of the new system to prepare limited stocks of sides, salad, ingredients and patties to combine them into the finished product. The lessening of the duration of the process to 3 minutes has reduced the risk of overproduction. The organization succeeded to maintain the overall production cycle time between 1 and 15 minutes, which enhances customer satisfaction and waste reduction (Muller, 2012). One of the vital elements that the company should focus on is continuous improvement by sharing best practices and regular audits. This links with the principle of pursuing perfection. The set of ideas of lean philosophy is no waste and perfect quality can be achieved by application of this process. An opportunity for wastage and cost is incurred by holding stock. McDonald's can eliminate all inventories through the implementation of a sophisticated stock control system. The excess handling of goods has resulted in the occurrence of transport waste. McDonald brothers have originally designed Speedy System which is still being implemented to unite the complete process so that it can help to link all preparation facilities in route of the assembly line. Transport waste is kept at a minimum level through closer proximity to the counter. This process of minimization of transport waste connects with the idea of motion waste and makes value flow by elimination of waste which guarantees that the product moves to the customer without any waiting or interruption.

This can be concluded that the implementation of principles of lean management in Mcdonald's can benefit achieve improvements in quality, lead-time and productivity by eliminating waste. The quest towards meeting the demand, with no waste and perfect quality, is at the heart of the lean philosophy. The application of an effective Speedy System by McDonald's can reduce transport waste, simplifies each task and eliminates unnecessary processes to certify that value is added through the process.