As manufacturing facilities move to cheaper offshore
locations, one type of production line is still going strong here in
America. The fast food industry has
perfected lean manufacturing principals, and developed innovative solutions that
their production facility counterparts could take example from.
Taco Bell serves more than 2 billion customers annually, in
the US alone, in more than 5800 restaurants; more than 80% of which are owned
and operated by independent franchises.
Despite this organizational structure, Taco Bell, and other fast food restaurants,
are able to manufacture a similar product that meets customer expectations
throughout the majority of their restaurants.
“Every Taco Bell, McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Burger King is a little
factory, with a manager who oversees three dozen workers, devises schedules and
shifts, keeps track of inventory and the supply chain, supervises an assembly
line churning out a quality-controlled, high-volume product and takes in
revenue of $1 million to $3 million a year, all with customers who show up at the
front end of the factory at all hours of the day to buy the product.”
The fast food industry has additional constraints, over
their production factory counterparts, which must be managed. One feature of fast food restaurants is to
offer special products for a limited time, at each of their franchises. To meet this deliverable, fast food
restaurants must simplify and automate their production processes, and have it
adaptable enough to handle new products at any given time. They also follow a production process
approach so that each worker in the restaurant contributes towards the finished
product. Just-in-time and lean
production techniques allow fast food restaurants to deliver products to their
customers quickly, while reducing the amount of inventory that needs to be
stockpiled to meet the changing demands.
Due to the number of customer interactions that each
franchise experiences, on a daily basis, and that one bad experience at one of
the restaurants could reduce sales across the entire chain, fast food
restaurants in America have developed a streamlined, organized, production
process that is both versatile and meets a very strict standard of expected
quality. Perhaps this is in part
accomplished through the low standards of the average American’s pallet, but to
supply such a consistent product in such high volumes, through multiple
independent facilities, is no small feat.
Are there any other examples of industries that meet such high
constraints on such a regular and consistent basis? One product that comes to mind is cheap
American light beer. It cannot be easy
to produce such a high volumes of low quality product that so consistently
doesn’t have any flavor characteristics at all.
Take that you German and Belgian breweries. We do manufacturing right, here in America!
What are some manufacturing principles that you have seen applied
in fast food restaurants that could be useful in other manufacturing
arenas? Are there any lean principles employed
in fast food restaurants that you had not realized before?
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