Please watch video for instructions and requirements for the exam:
Also find below the links to the articles
All exam questions will be based on the McDonalds case study.
But some questions may explicitly state two options for you:
1. to analyze the case organization or
2. another organisation of your choice, in this case you will have the opportunity discuss an organization of your choice.
But there will be no compulsory requirement to analyse an organization other than the case organization.
Also, please note ‘your organization’ in the video refers to ‘your current organization or any other organization with which you familiar’
https://myaib.zoom.us/recording/play/PqE4mLr7sN3wxGrHDlv62Xki6VtztqwPvqxYCU1ask94pkykrg0jGWx2UWfu-XRS?autoplay=true&startTime=1538793723000
The following case study forms the basis of the exam questions.
Read the case study prior to the exam to ensure that you have a solid understanding of the discussion presented in the case study
ARTICLE 1
https://www.eater.com/2018/1/30/16937672/mcdonalds-comeback-stock-price-all-day-breakfast-delivery
ARITICLE 2
IS ATTACHED BELOW
The rise and fall of McDonald’s
This case study is based on the article by Hatic (2018), ‘Five reasons McDonald’s is back on top’ in Eater (2018). Prior to reading this article, you should read the case, ‘McDonald’s: Half a century of growth’, provided in the textbook (Slack et al. 2015, pp. 74-79 of the 4th edition; pp. 61-64 of the 3rd edition; pp. 74-77 of the 5th edition) to understand the brief history of McDonald’s and how the company managed to achieve a prosperous growth from 1955 to 2009.
Despite decades of prosperity, in early 2015 McDonald’s announced its first annual sales decline since 2002. This decline was mainly caused by the severe competition from firms like Burger King, Wendy’s, Taco Bell and Sonic, and under-delivering on their customer expectations. As such, the company faced an urgent need to re-establish its market position based on its core operational advantages such as best value, consistency and convenience.
As a result, in March 2015, the new CEO Steve Easterbrook took over McDonald’s with the intention of turning around the business. The following article describes a series of operations, and technology and innovation initiatives launched by McDonald’s under the leadership of the new CEO. These have helped turn around the business and strengthen its position in the market after years of declining of sales.
Five reasons McDonald’s is back on top
by Diana Hactic, Jan 30, 2018
After years of declining sales, McDonald’s has seemingly righted its ship: Since CEO Steve Easterbrook took over in 2015, changes such as the launch of all-day breakfast have helped propel the fast-food titan out of its sales slump. It’s managed to maintain its upward trajectory over the past year, with its stock price rising by more than 40 percent in 2017.
The chain just reported its best sales growth in six years, with domestic same-store sales up 4.5 percent, and it’s seen an increase in foot traffic to its restaurants for the first time in four years. ‘We’ve successfully completed the transition from turnaround to growth,’ Easterbrook told investors on the company’s quarterly earnings call.
Meanwhile, the chain’s resistance to increasing worker pay has made it a target of the Fight for $15 movement; in 2016, Easterbrook earned $1.26 million as a base salary, or 74 times as much as the company’s lowest-paid workers.
Here now, a look at the initiatives that put McDonald’s back on top of its fast-food rivals – including the return of the dollar menu, an emphasis on fresher ingredients, more environmentally friendly packaging, and a new push into China.
Menu changes
Just a few months after Easterbrook took charge, McDonald’s introduced all-day breakfast, capitalising on its most profitable menu (which as fans know well, used to end at 10:30 a.m). After initially leaving certain items off the all-day breakfast menu, McDonald’s expanded its offerings over the course of 2016, adding the McGriddle, and as a result saw an additional boost in overall sales.
Fresh beef
In May 2016, McDonald’s began experimenting with fresh (rather than frozen) beef patties, testing cooked-to-order Quarter Pounders at 14 stores in the Dallas area. Despite some franchisees’ concerns about food safety and longer cooking times, the company has continued playing around with fresh beef, with the aim of serving cooked-to-order Quarter Pounders in every U.S. store by mid-2018. It is also now using fresh beef for a throwback menu item called the Archburger, which launched in January 2018 at a handful of locations in Oklahoma and Texas. (The Archburger is a reboot of McDonald’s old Arch Deluxe, which attempted to appeal to upscale tastes in the late 90s, to limited success.)
A move away from preservatives
In another move emblematic of the chain’s push toward relatively fresher and/or seemingly healthier food, in August 2016 it mixed artificial preservatives from McNuggets. The company later reported that McKnight sales rose 10 percent as a result.
Dollar menu
In January 2018 McDonald’s finally brought back its dollar menu after a five-year hiatus, marking the return of a deal structure that had been displaced by alternative – and less popular – offers, like the McPick $2. The removal of the dollar menu coincided with the company’s initial decline, and its return makes it competitive among other chains with similar value menus, such as Taco Bell and Wendy’s.
Making moves in China
In 2016, McDonald’s announced a significant push into Asia, with a goal of adding 1,500 new restaurants across China, Hong Kong, and Korea over five years. (It’s no secret that China represents a huge emerging market for American restaurant chains – just ask Starbucks.) To decentralise company ownership of franchises, in January 2017, McDonald’s sold its businesses in China and Hong Kong to the state-owned conglomerate Citic and a private equity firm called the Carlyle Group. This move was intended to save the company money on modernising stores, and with China under new ownership, the development goal then shifted to adding 2,000 locations by 2022.
Tech innovations and delivery
When Easterbrook took over in 2015, he acknowledged that the company had fallen behind the rest of the fast-food industry when it came to innovation, and vowed to change that. McDonald’s has since implemented new technology for ordering and delivery, including a mobile order-and-pay-ahead app and a delivery partnership with UberEats. Kiosks The burger brand first experimented with digital self-ordering technology prior to Easterbrook’s arrival in late 2014, in the form of build-your-own burger kiosks, and has subsequently rolled out the tech to additional stores. Though some speculated that order kiosks would replace cashiers and lead to fewer jobs, the company insists the technology is merely designed to speed up the ordering process and reduce errors: Tech-upgraded stores still rely on staff to deliver food to diners’ tables.
Mobile app updates
The chain launched its long-awaited mobile ordering app in mid-2017, enabling users to order and pay for food via their smartphones and retrieve via the drive-thru, curbside pickup, or inside the restaurant. McDonald’s says the mobile app now has more than 20 million registered users. Delivery McDonald’s also sees major opportunity in the delivery sphere: It began testing delivery via UberEats at select locations in late 2016, and by October 2017 the partnership had been rolled out to 5,000 stores. Check averages are one and a half to two times higher for delivery orders, and the chain has said that 75 percent of its customers live within three miles of a McDonald’s, which simplifies delivery logistics. The company intends to offer delivery from 10,000 U.S. stores by 2019.
Talk of becoming more environmentally friendly
Though many consider the fast-food giant the epitome of Big Evil Food, McDonald’s marketing team is busy trying to sway public opinion through environmentally friendly initiatives. In early 2017, the chain announced it was funding sustainable beef pilot programs in the U.S. and Brazil, testing new cattle-grazing methods to cut down on its carbon footprint; it also vowed to eliminate deforestation from its supply chain by 2020. This year the company revealed a plan to switch to renewable or recyclable materials for all its packaging, eliminating all styrofoam by the end of 2018.
More franchises, fewer company-owned stores
Easterbrook also implemented a plan to unload 4,000 company-owned restaurants by the end of 2018, selling off said stores to franchisees. Because of its reliance on franchised locations, in which McDonald’s owns properties and leases them to franchisees, the chain has been described as more of a real estate company than a fast-food restaurant. This real estate ownership strategy allows McDonald’s to keep a larger percentage of revenue from franchisee-owned stores – about 82 percent, as opposed to about 16 percent from company-run stores, Quartz estimated. Now 92 percent of McDonald’s locations are franchises, which cuts overall costs for the company. McDonald’s mostly-franchise model largely also allows it to pass the buck onto its franchisees when it comes to how workers are paid and treated. The fast-food giant has long argued that it cannot be held accountable for the wages set by franchise owners, as it is not the direct ’employer’ of those workers. In 2014, the National Labour Relations Board ruled that the McDonald’s Corporation was a ‘joint employer’ along with its franchisee owners, meaning it could be held liable for the working conditions at any of its restaurants (and leading to a lengthy legal battle between the fast-food chain and the labour board). But last December, the NLRB under the Trump administration overturned that ruling, a big win for McDonald’s – and a major blow to fast-food workers’ fight for higher wages.
All this is not to say the company has entirely turned itself around. Even during all these changes, the company still faces issues such as rising labour costs and increased competition from the fast-casual sector. At least no one can argue against the fact that McDonald’s has truly mastered the art of the French fry.
References
Slack, N, Brandon-Jones, A, Johnston, R & Betts, A 2015, Case Study ‘McDonald’s: Half century of growth from 1955 to 2009’, in Operations and process management, 4th edn, Pearson Education Limited, Harlow, pp. 65-68.
Hatic, D 2018, ‘Five reasons McDonald’s is back on top’, Eater, viewed 22 August 2018, https://www.eater.com/2018/1/30/16937672/mcdonalds-comeback-stock-price-all-day-breakfast-delivery.

ONLY DO ONE INTRODUCTION FOR McDonalds(+-10 lines (paragraph)
NO THEORY – NO CITATIONS OR REFERENCES
I HAVE THE THEORIES JUST THE FOLLOWING IS REQUIIRED:
VARIOUS CASE SCENARIOS FOR OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT for the two articles for McDonalds – IT IS IMPORTANT TO NUMBER YOUR REPLIES (WITH A HEADING SO I CAN FOLLOW).
In every response to each question, please reply with the critical analysis/ apply strategies/ recommendations and a conclusion
For example:
Introduction to McDonalds
Then I provide the theory
Then a critical analysis as below
1. Understand the significance of the input transformation-output process of McDonalds operation and the different levels of business – the individual process level, the operation level and the supply network levels seen from the process perspective. THIS SHOULD BE AROUND 15 sentences.
Then recommendations – PLEASE PROVIDE ABOUT 5 sentences
Conclusion – PLEASE PROVIDE 5 sentences
2. Crtically analyse the four V characteristics for McDonalds (explaining the practical meaning and how this applies to McDonalds. THIS SHOULD BE AROUND 15 Sentences.

Then recommendations – around 5 sentencs

Conclustion – Around 5 sentences

3. Critically analyse and apply the five operations performance objectives to McDonalds – how they reflect the performance outcomes of all McDonalds operations management concepts – the relationship to the five performance objectives ? how does this link with the operations strategy for McDonalds. THIS SHOULD BE AROUND 15 SENTENCES.

Then recommendations – around 5 sentences.

Then conclusion around – 5 sentences.

4. Critically analyse and apply how does top up top down and bottom up techniques work for McDonalds? Around 15 sentences

Then recommendations – 5 sentences
Then conclusion – 5 sentences

5. Critically analyse operations trade offs for McDonalds – 15 sentences
Then recommendations – 5 sentences
Then conclusion – 5 sentences

6. Critically analyse capacity, the issues, management and planning – explain how to apply longer-term capacity concepts to McDonalds – Around 15 sentences
Then recommendations – around 5 sentences
Then conclusion – around 5 sentences.

7. Critically analyse process design – positioning – the processes and concepts the right type – the 4 basic lay out types – Around 15 sentences
Then conclusion – 5 sentences
Then recommendations.- 5 sentences

8. Discuss and analyse the operations performance objectives for McDonalds supply chain and particular goals to provide for customer needs. Apply the SCOR model, leaness and agility. Around 15 sentences

Then recommendations – 5 sentences
Then conclusion – 5 sentences.

9. Discuss and analyse how McDonalds manages supply chain relationships? Here you need to understand the differences between the two types of relationships. – 15 sentences
Then recommendations – 5 sentences
Then conclusions.- 5 sentences

10. Discuss and analyse critically how McDonalds manage the supply side and the demand side of the supply chain and the supply chain dynamics. – around 15 sentences.
Then recommendations – 5 sentences.
Then conclusion – 5 sentences.

11. Discuss, critically apply and analyse the current capacity leakage and overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) – The practical application for McDonalds – The mismatches, using the three different capacity management plans – LEVEL CAPACITY, CHASE DEMAND, MANAGE DEMAND,SHORT TO MEDIUM TERM CAPACITY – 15 sentences
Then recommendations. – 5 sentences
Then conclusion. – 5 sentences

12. Discuss, critical analyse what is inventory management, explain what the purpose of inventory is and what is meant by management when applied practically. Analyze McDonalds role of inventory, discuss the different types of inventory and their purpose in McDonalds – Explain how inventory management is defined and conducted in the company’s operations processes – and discuss, explain :why should there be any inventory for McDonalds? – 20 sentences.
Then recommendations – 5 sentences
Then conclusions – 5 sentences

13. Discuss/analyse, critically, McDonalds – EOQ – why safety stocks are important? Practical inventory management? How much to order? – 15 sentences
Then recommendations – 5 sentences
Then conclusions – 5 sentences

14. Critically analyse/ discuss the difference between continuous and periodic review systems in the timing of orders for McDonalds – 15 sentences.
Then recommendations – 5 sentences
Then conclusions – 5 sentences

15. Critically analyse/discuss inventory control and ABC analysis for McDonalds – How significant is it for McDonalds? – Explain the practical use of the PARETO method, what common problems could there be for McDonalds? 15 sentences.
Then recommendations – 5 sentences
Then conclusions – 5 sentences

16. Critically analyse/discuss McDonalds resource planning and control – – the core mechanisms of planning and control – loading and scheduling – 15 sentences
Then recommendations – 5 sentences
Then conclusion – 5 sentences.

17. Critically analyse, apply practical thinking and explain McDonalds enterprise resource planning (ERP) – How this integrates – 15 sentences.
Then recommendations – 5 sentences
Then conclusions – 5 sentences

18. Discuss/explain/analyse how to apply the loading, sequencing, scheduling and monitoring and controlling concepts for McDonalds – 15 sentences
Then recommendations – 5 sentences
Then conclusions – 5 sentences

19. Discuss/critically analyse the theory of constraints for McDonalds and how it applies to the operations process for Mc Donalds – 15 sentences.
Then recommendations – 5 sentences
Then conclusion – 5 sentences

20. Explain the meaning of lean synchronisation and its benefits for McDonalds – illustrate very clearly the factors that contribute to lean synchronisation through waste elimination for McDonalds – 15 sentences
Then recommendations – 5 sentences
Then conclusion – 5 sentences.

21. Critically discuss/apply/explain the application of just in time (JIT), to McDonalds – visibility, pull control and Kanban’s – 15 sentences
Then recommendations – 5 sentences
Then conclusion – 5 sentences

22. Discuss, critically analyse, explain barriers to lean synchronisation for McDonalds – Difficulties in implementing – 15 sentences
Then recommendations – 5 sentences
Then conclusions 5 – sentences

23. Discuss/explain analyse defining/managing quality – explain the practical importance of quality and quality measurement for McDonalds – how it should be measured in getting producst/services right according to what customers want – 15 sentences
Then recommendations – 5 sentences
Then conclusion – 5 sentences

24. Explain, critically analyse, discuss the practical application of (total quality management) TQM – for McDonalds – 15 sentences
Then recommendations – 5 sentences
Then conclusion – 5 sentences

25. Identify/analyse/explain how you would go about finding improvements opportunities for McDonalds, improving performance – 15 sentences
Then recommendations – 5 sentences
Then conclusions – 5 sentences

26. What methods or strategies for improvement? Determine the most appropriate improvement methods to use in the practical improvement decisions for McDonalds. PDCD AND DMAIC cycles approach to improvement – 15 sentences
Then recommendations – 5 sentences
Then conclusions – 5 sentences

27. Improvement techniques – how would you apply this to McDonalds – Explain the tools needed to solve practical problems- TQM – 4 useful techniques, explain the tools that might be used in solving a specific practical problem for McDonalds – show how each of the tools can be used and which ones are likely to be most effective –
– 20 sentences
Then recommendations – 5 sentences
Then conclusions – 5 sentences