Operational Design Elements Of Burger King

Process Type

TASK 1

For burger king operation, outline all the elements of operations design with reference to customer requirements (new performance objectives).

Burger King’s has always tried to maintain its strong foothold in the market by constantly catering to the customers predicting their requirements and tastes and adopting inventive measures like adding new ingredients to the existing ones. Its business strategies have never really failed to entice the customers, and making the brand very much relevant in the market today. Burger King has implemented a number of essential business strategies to develop a loyal customer base, for instance intangibility, customization and a systematic customer services which have further made all the different outlets of Burger King function in an efficient manner (Norman, Natarajan and Sen 2015). However, here are the operational designs of Burger King which they have incorporated keeping in consideration the customer needs:

Capacity and Demand: capacity is the rate at which the operation has the capacity to transform inputs into outputs. It is the number of products or the quantity of goods that can be made under normal circumstances. The factors that can affect the same for Burger King are technological factors, storage facilities, and availability of raw materials. These factors should be evaluated and applied to ensure that customer requirement and demands are being met. In case of high demands the technological factor has to be more advanced to ensure greater production and quality retention. The raw materials required for the manufacturing of the burgers should be high in quality and should be readily available for increasing the supply. Furthermore, storage facilities play a great role in food and beverage companies. Storage spaces and temperatures have to be evaluated, responding to the high turnover of the stocks. The storage facilities of the burger king should be able to maintain high levels of hygiene and product traceability. There should be suitable cold storage warehouses for the storage of the raw materials for keeping the perishable items free.

Process Type: Process type is generally comprised of four categories like a product’s cost structure, the standardization of the company’s products and its requirements, the flexibility of production and output volume. There are a number of process types like Projects, Job Shops, Batch Shops, Flow Lines, Assembly Lines, and Continuous Flow Process. Projects generally result in just one output, with job shops one can attain small batches of a number of different products, and Batch Shops are responsible for producing regular batches of the same thing or product. With flow lines one can ensure different stations producing the same products and Assembly Lines are known for producing discrete parts with a balanced line. However, Continuous flow process produces goods at a continuous pace.

Location Strategy

Location Strategy:the objective of location strategy is to ensure the maximum benefit of location for the firm. Location decisions should be made on a long term basis and should not be volatile in nature. The same is influenced by cultural aspects, accessibility to supplies and communications etc. This requires Burger King to have a thorough analysis of its potential customers which will help Burger King’s in effective and successful market participation. Burger King’s has ensured that their market positions have the strategies to challenge its rival companies. For example it is more convenient to build Burger King Outlets in the urban areas, or near any residential communities or near colleges and universities that would attract the potential customers than those living in the rural areas.

Layout Strategies and Flow: Layout strategy is how the transformed resources are positioned and how tasks are assigned to these transforming resourced. The decision will dictate the pattern of flow of the resources through the operational process. The flow of customers or materials should be apparent to the staffs and customers alike. Burger King’s operation management concentrates on efficiency. In this case, Burger King’s ensures to utilize the space for increasing productivity of their services. Burger King’s has planned the layout in this manner so it can increase worker efficiency and cater to the customers better. Having process layout will help Burger King massively in the production process. It will furthermore benefit Burger King with flexibility, efficient supervision and better worker utilization to enhance productivity.   Product layout of the Burger King should be improved in order to get a standardized quality of Burger in terms of size, color, taste. 

Supply Chain Management: Burger King has acquired a global supply chain with operations dispersed well across the countries. Burger King is flexible enough to adapt itself to the dynamics of market and its future trends (Balcik, Bozkir and Kundakcioglu 2016). It has been one of the primary aims of Burger King to deliver the best in a globalized economy and changing market patterns. Burger King should focus more on an integrated supply chain management instead of narrowly focused purchasing. It is essential to keep a sight on the use of the raw materials, manufacture of the burger, finances of the company as they move from the supplier to the manufacturer to the wholesaler to the consumer.

The five performance objectives that can be achieved by the above elements of operational designs are:

Layout Strategies and Flow

Cost: the cost that is invested in producing a product is dependent and influenced by volume, variety, visibility and variation. Burger King can provide the customers services at low cost which can be attained by potent staff, materials, technology and process. A proper management of cost will ensure that the organization is being able to retain a good return on investment even after offering goods and services at low cost. High quality and flexibility will be instrumental in saving the operational cost. Most of the food items of the Burger King are pocket friendly which caters to the huge turnover of the company. Apart from its signature product, it provides a wide range of meals, beverages, desserts and sandwiches in reasonable cost.  

Quality: the quality of Burger king’s products can be measured in the yardstick of reliability, durability and performance. Enhanced quality can be attained by providing quality and error free services. With effective technologies and screening Burger King can focus more on the qualities, such as improving the quality of the flour or reducing the amount of trans –fat or improving the packaging systems such as from plastic packages to environmental paper packages. The factors that can enhance Burger’s King Quality are speed of delivery which can furthermore affect the quality of product delivered. Customers however, do not prefer delayed deliveries or an uncertainty regarding their products and it is here that the quality of Burger King’s services depends. In this context, Burger King can also work on the décor whether classy or urbane, for instance in case of Mac Donald’s it is fancy fast food with contemporary colors and materials.

Flexibility- it depends on how swiftly Burger King can adapt itself to the changing needs and preferences of their customers. Burger King’s ability to provide innovative and customized needs to their customers from time to time can increase their flexibility. With greater flexibility Burger King will be able to introduce new dishes to the menu along with vast modifications. Burger King will be able to produce exotic cuisines on the basis of ethnicity and countries. Besides this, Burger King will also need to acquire strategies to meet production volumes. Regarding the packaging, when people are more concerned with their health, it is necessary to cater to public’s health without just looking after the profits, such as use of biodegradable packaging, use of good qualities of bread, proper storage of the meats.  It is necessary with delivery flexibility that is the process of providing a faster delivery, will help Burger King compete with rival firms like Mac Donald’s or Subway. This will specifically be famous amongst the youngsters who pay higher for a faster delivery service. According to Slack, volume flexibility is based on two aspects which are range of variation and speed of response (Slack 2015). With mix flexibility, Burger King will be able to improve their marketing strategies to cope with competitor’s actions. Mix flexibility helps a firm to produce products that will introduce services for different market segmentations.

Supply Chain Management

Introducing new products and adopting new technology can increase the compatibility of Burger King. In order to increase product flexibility, these are some of the crucial requirements to ensure the same- creating product awareness, having customer knowledge and subcontracting. Product flexibility will help Burger King to introduce new products in the market and sharpening its competitive edge. It will also help to respond the shifting pattern of market demands.  

Speed: the time calculated for speed ranges from the beginning of the operation to the end of the same. Externally, it is the time starting from the customers’ request ending at their receiving of the same (Boje, Haley and Saylors 2016). Burger King can increase its popularity among the customers by decreasing the span of time needed to deliver the product to customers. To beat in this respect Burger King can invest in online and mobile ordering. McDonald’s however, offers delivery through UberEats at around 3,700 locations spanning United States. Efficient location strategy and planning can however increase the speed of delivery (Haywood and Pickworth 2015).

Providing contrast by discussing how these elements may differ in other operational contexts will add value.

The basic elements of operational design of other operational context like that of a garment outlet will naturally differ from Burger King:

Location Strategy: In case of location, a garment outlet will tend to gain more foot traffic if the store is providing for a number of facilities like parking area (Chen,and Tsai 2016). The retailer should however take into consideration other factors like the neighborhood, easily accessible from metro or bus, density of prospective customers with a high income and rival competitors. For instance if the store is situated to a discount garment cheap store, it will obviously fail to compete with the same.

Supply Chain Management: First, a retailer has to point out a niche for their offerings among the available market segments and therefore achieve a target market. This will provide tge company a chance for growth. Secondly, retailers must design and develop an appropriate retail format. The type of supply chain will differ according to the product type and of course the preferences of customers

Task 2 From the design elements, choose and justify two that you consider most important to burger king operational success.

The two design elements that will be responsible for the operation success of Burger King’s are:

Quality Management: Burger King can successfully revamp its business and sales by concentrating more on the quality of food than the speed at which they are delivering it. As Burger King’s strategy is to provide faster service than most of its rival competitors, it considerably affects the quality of food that they are serving to the customers (Block et al. 2013). For upgrading the quality of food, they need to some of its ingredients which would make the menu both tastier and healthier. For a fast food company to survive and compete in the industry, it has to come up with new menus that would appeal to the taste buds of wider population (Kruger et al. 2014). Burger King’s should bring to the menu quality ingredients as studies reveal that more than healthier food choices, the customers who frequent to the fast food outlets generally incline more towards tastier options .

Capacity and Demand

Adapting product and process design and applying the same to the food items can make it more relatable or desirable to the customers. For instance, Burger King’s hot dogs are selling in two different ways to make it suit the requirements and preferences of customers (Duarte Alonso et al. 2013). One type of it is smeared with chili and cheese while the other type is filled with ketchup and mustard. The quality of food that is being served should be evaluated at every step right from how the food is being prepared, packaged, and transported and finally getting served. Providing basic training on maintaining standard and quality of food is also essential to achieve success in the fast food sector.

Supply Chain Management: various factors come to play lie market demands, pricing and transportation in order to manage the supply chain in an efficient manner. Within the realm of supply chain, the company can benefit from two ways, by reducing costs and increasing the responsiveness. Burger King’s objective should be to create customer value and that can be achieved with the help of supply chain management. By managing long-term relationships and dealing with customer complaints will help Burger King to build a strong customer loyalty. The same will also help Burger King by lowering stocking cists and eliminating demand uncertainty which will again help Burger King to improve customer service. The supply chain strategies will have to be chalked out according to market change and customer preferences (Cui and Wu 2016).

Burger King should compare its performance with that of a rival competitor like Subway to gain a competitive advantage in the market. A proper management of supply chain will enable the flow of materials and information seamlessly and will therefore maximize the value of the company by catering to customer with quality delivery. For effective Supply Chain Management practices, Burger King should develop outsourcing, information sharing and building a good relationship with the customers. Customer relationship in fact is an important aspect of supply chain management. This will furthermore help Burger King with innovative products and the opportunity to make it unique from its competitors. With an effective SCM, a company can increase its productivity, customer satisfaction and loyalty. These are some of the factors that will give Burger King a strong foothold in the market.

Burger King has done significantly well in the field of innovation and therefore customer satisfaction, because of which it was awarded creative marketer of the year, using creativity as a catalyst, Burger King has always striven to stand competitive in the market. It is due to these factors that Burger King had maintained its brand appeal even amidst its competitors like Wendy’s and Mac Donald’s.

Detail how burger king operation applies these two elements to meet and exceed customer requirements and evaluate performance in this context.

In case of location management, Burger King’s has strategically opened branches that are exposed to higher foot traffic. The high visibility that they have gained also significantly has reduced the cost of marketing and advertisements (Miller 2016). Also Burger King has adopted a low cost delivery price which has further increased its popularity amongst the customers. Furthermore, to increase the operational success it has maintained not to open multiple numbers of branches in the same area which in turn would have reduced the competition and made the market saturated.

As far as flexibility is concerned, Burger King should differentiate itself from the other fast food outlets and Burger King’s has not done very well in this sector. It has failed to diversify its products and to meet with the changing lifestyle pattern which made more number of people to hanker after healthy food.

Supply chain management: Burger King has made efficient use of its supply chain management and brought innovation into its products. However, over the last few years, it has shown sheer lack of interest in operational management and issues (Christopher 2016). Burger King can still revamp its business if it concentrates on marketing plans, sales and innovative measures. In this respect, RSI is collaborating with Burger King to ensure the best in marketing developments and developing the essentials for meeting customer demands.  RSI has been also working to establish a smooth communication between Burger King Distributors, suppliers and restaurant handlers which will make transaction in more than 12,200 outlets world-wide (Dey 2016).

Task3: outline and illustrate the principles and ideas of quality, by considering how they are, or could be, utilized to improve performance of burger king operation.

Customer Focus: It should be the primary focus of Burger King and definitely could be applied to renovate the menu that they are currently offering. An organization will only be able to attain success when it achieves the confidence of its customers and customer loyalty. As a result Burger King would achieve increased market share and revenue as well (Harrington et al.  2017).

Leadership: leadership would ensure that the company is heading towards the right direction in attaining long-term goals and objectives. It will furthermore help Burger King to establish unity of purpose and align the policies and resources to achieve the best.

People Involvement: people of different levels should be engaged to enhance the productivity and deliver valuable service to the customers (Jaakkola and Alexander 2014). It is necessary to conduct a continuous survey in order to assess the feedbacks of the people about the eatable of Burger King and improve accordingly.

Continual Improvement: it is essential for an organization to create new opportunities which would be beneficial for a smooth operation. Burger King can establish and promote improvement objectives at the various organizational levels which will also include proper training of people. This would facilitate an improvement in the quality with the usage of tools and methodologies (Zurich 2017).

Mutually Beneficial Relationship: This requires a well-coordinated relationship with the suppliers which will in turn ensure a stable flow of goods and raw materials. Burger King can encourage the suppliers by recognizing improvements and achievements. This will also give rise to enhanced productivity and seamless operation.

Conclusion:

Therefore, from the above analysis one can safely conclude that  Burger King should emphasize on four priorities, which are an expansion in the menu to elevate Burger King’s identity and appeal beyond its target of young males, store restorations, and of course operations improvements. Setting customer-oriented strategies and adapting the principles of quality for operational management can be beneficial. The same can bring a radical change and elevate Burger King to the height of success.

Operational design involves strategies that help to promote the company to the top position in the industry. The same should be unique and inventive in its approach to ensure that it has a subtle difference from its rival companies and therefore should standardize one from the other completely. Operational design is also responsible for adding customization to the product or brand which will furthermore make the product more dynamic in the global market. The same is also responsible for managing the company’s resources to meet the long term goals of the business.

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