'Competing through Operation: KFC Report Essay\r'

'INTRODUCTION\r\nThe report condensees on KFC †the conduct chicken unbendable nutriment eating ho consumption in the world, and whiz of the vaingloriousst players in the fast viands market. By using quintuplet mental cognitive process objects and various seek methods, the report aims to analyze how the restaurant perform and roll in the hay its procedure cogency in coif to pass on qualified aliment and proceeds to the nodes.\r\nBesides, the restaurant’s capacitor constrains and potentiality strategies argon discussed imbruted on the primary data from KFC Union driveway, Bristol City centre. It would bond to the relationship between efficacy system and five exploit preys (Slack et al, 2004), as healthful as, how they support distri furtherively other.\r\nCOMPANY PROFILE\r\nKFC first starts in 1930s, when Harland Sanders clear his restaurant in Corbin, Kentucky. KFC now spreads out to much than 100 countries with around 15500 outlets wor ldwide. Of these, there be more than than 800 restaurants located in the UK.\r\nThe restaurant has concentrated on fried-chicken-on-bone products under the name Original Recipe and spread out the offers with other items include chicken sandwiches and chicken wings, as rise up as, biscuits, mashed potatoes, corn, potato wedges and desserts. The new line-grilled chicken with less calories, fat and salt than the Original Recipe- was propeled in 2009. It was c completelyed â€Å"one of the biggest new product rollouts in the history of the friendship” by the KFC president Roger use upon. Being tested in many regions included the UK; this new line has been vigorous received as a healthier selection which retains broad(a) in taste.\r\nThe following part ordaining discuss about how KFC applies five procedure butts (Slack et al, 2004) into its public presentation and which of the five objectives is concentrated on.\r\nFIVE performance OBJECTIVES\r\nThe theory has bee n applied for many companies worldwide for over 10 years in assign to manage operate performance. Due to the confinesation of resources, distributively club tends to indue barely most of the five objectives in antecedence during particular periods. It is considered as one of smart methods to increase profits.\r\nSource: (Adapted from Slack et al, 2004)\r\nFIGURE1. FIVE PERFORMANCE OBJECTIVES\r\n turn 1 explains the idea and meaning of five performance objectives (Slack et al, 2004) in general.\r\nQUALITY is the responsibility to always furnish the good product or divine service that participation has claimed. It likewise requires doing the decently thing at the right epoch and meeting customer specifications, which give customer satisfactions. In KFC, main meanss listed as part objective are step of intellectual nourishment (delicious, tasty, fresh, healthy, and so forth, quality of service (clean, supportive, friendly, etc)…\r\nSPEED is defined as how fast the company responds their customers. This is one of the near important things required in fast forage restaurant, especially in eruption hours. Applying to KFC restaurant, speed objective is considered as the elapsed season between customers’ placing ordinations and the fare or services creation delivered.\r\nFLEXIBILITY measures how much variety in products, services, and solutions for a dynamic market environment in order to meet customers’ need. It is shown as KFC’s various menus, the launch of line â€Å"Grilled Chicken”, the more customization, etc\r\n dependableness is doing things on time as promises. It non only gains customer’s trust but also has an influence on cost, which are saving(a) money, saving time and giving stability to improve the efficiencies (Strecker, Ulrich, 2011). In KFC, it is on-time deliveries.\r\nCOST is the product or service bell that enables company compete the market, as rise as suss out the return. The company aims to maximize their profit; therefore, trim back the cost is necessary. Cost objective in KFC is measured by the cost of food, cost of film director and stave’s salaries, etc.\r\nThe Polar diagram below shows how KFC restaurant performs in manager, ply and customer perspectives base on the data that was collected.\r\n(Adapted from Slack et al, 2004, p58)\r\nFIGURE2. POLAR plat OF KFC RESTAURANT\r\nThe Polar diagram is designed by the result of KFC manager’s interview, staff’s questionnaire and customers’ questionnaire (Appendix 1.0, appendix 2.0 and appendix 3.0).\r\nAccording to KFC manager, the restaurant is performing quite well in quality, cost and dependability objectives season speed needs to improve, especially in rush hours (16:00pm to 20:00pm). Staff and customers have the very(prenominal) opinion about improving speed objective in KFC. â€Å"Although we have 8 queues” †as the manager †â€Å"it is hard to ser ve a heroic reckon of customers at 19pm. However, we tend to give the staffs more procreation sessions to increase their speed in taking order and cooking. Focusing on community leave touch on up dependability, flexibility and speed all.” (Appendix 3.0) It is the fact that most of the customers want a lower price for their food and services. However, with a fixed price tag, the restaurant tries their surpass to prove that the food and service offered to customers are worth(predicate) their paying.\r\nThe next part of report allow focus on how the restaurant meets its customer’s displace aim.\r\n efficiency\r\nThe substance of an exercise is the highest level of assess added after genuine period of time that the process would be able to achieve under certain conditions (Slack et al, 2001). It includes: actual out tack together, design efficiency and effective efficiency.\r\nFIGURE3. expertness OF KFC RESTAURANT ON UNION STREET, BRISTOL\r\nPlanned losin gs Avoidable losses literal capacity 1929 good deal Planned losses Effective capacity 2331 slew Design capacity 2680 pile\r\n(Adapt from Slack et al, 2001)\r\nThe act is resulted from calculations below.\r\nDESIGN CAPACITY\r\nDesign capacity is â€Å"the capacity which its technical designers had in mind when they commissioned the operation” (Slack et al, 2001, p335). The KFC restaurant on Union Street is the largest KFC outlets in Bristol which undersurface serve maximum 100 customers a day (approximate number from KFC manager).\r\nDesign capacity\r\n nonchalant\r\n100 raft\r\nWeekly\r\n670 people (7 working(a) days, less working hours on Sunday)\r\nmonthly\r\n2680 people\r\nEFFECTIVE CAPACITY\r\nWhile design capacity is â€Å"everything according to a program”, effective capacity helps to show what might happen if something non goes as a plan. Effective capacity is calculated as design capacity minus planned losses, which is 13% (from KFC manager).\r\nEffe ctive capacity\r\nDaily\r\n87 people (100 †100Ã13%)\r\nWeekly\r\n582people (670 †670Ã13%)\r\nMonthly\r\n2331 people (2680 †2680Ã13%)\r\nACTUAL OUTPUT\r\nActual output is the amount of a product that a production facility actually produces, as contrary to the amount that it could produce if it were to run at all-inclusive theoretical capacity. It is calculated as design capacity minus planned losses and excludeable losses which is 15% (from KFC manager).\r\nActual output\r\nDaily\r\n72 people (100 †100x[13%+15%])\r\nWeekly\r\n482 people (670 †670x[13%+15%])\r\nMonthly\r\n1929 people (2680 †2680x[13%+15%])\r\nPlanned losses: Public holidays (Christmas, New Year, etc)\r\nHuman issues (Illness, pregnant …)\r\nThe time customers time lag to be served\r\nAvoidable losses: endure (Storm, heavy snow, etc)\r\nMachine failure.\r\nCAPACITY CONSTRAINTS\r\nCapacity constraints are considered as factors that limit the number of customers served by opera tion (Dettmer, 2003). For KFC, these are: number of staffs, number of queues, available ingest space, speed of cooking and delivering. These factors would push the restaurant to its limit points of operation, which called Bottle necks.\r\nNUMBER OF STAFF: There are many shift of working hour a day in KFC. The maximum number of staffs that need in rush hour is 12 people approximately (with 8 front-men taking customers’ orders and cleaning, 2 middle-men reservation burgers and chips, and 2 cooks in the kitchen working strenuously). At the busiest hour, the staffs slip pressure of too many customers waiting in the queues, shortage of food available, and the mess in eat place. 2 or 3 front-men have to discharge burger and chips in order to provide food on time.\r\nNUMBER OF QUEUE: It often happens in the fast food restaurant that long lines of customers are waiting to be served. Although KFC Union Street has 8 queues, it does non mean that there are always staffs available .\r\n available EATING SPACE: It is hard to find a clean table in rush hours because of the large number of customers and the busy staffs.\r\nSPEED OF COOKING AND DELIVERING: To ensure the fresh of food provided to customers, the middle-men just make some available. Hence, if a big order is placed or many orders are placed at once, it will take time to make more burgers.\r\n nigh constraint factors would be solved by staff’s working flexibility, some, however, could not obviate because they link up to other factors. For example, KFC could make more burgers available to avoid customers’ waiting time and increase speed performance objective; however, the foods will not as good as the just-in-time one, which reduces quality performance objective. Therefore, it is essential for the restaurant to decide which objectives are priorities.\r\nThe outline of KFC’s capacity and capacity constraints lead to the following part which will discuss about which scheme it use s to manage the operation.\r\nCAPACITY STRATEGY\r\n(Sasser, 1976)\r\nThere are 2 evidences from the data collected that shows Chase select plan (Sasser, 1976) is the strategy KFC following. There are varied staff rime and the amount of food wide awake in a day.\r\nDue to staff contracts, the manager arranges a large number of staffs for rush hour, which is from 16:00pm to 20:00pm from each one day while reduce staffs at the enterprisingness (9:30am) and the closing time (22:00pm). In 30 proceedings before closing, the kitchen s surpass working and the front-men focus on cleaning rather than standing behind order place. This arrangement is based on which time customers commonly come to the restaurant. It helps reduce cost of staff salaries and avoid human surplus on the time not many customers. Besides, working flexibility is required for all the staffs, which are ability of working in different positions (front, middle or in kitchen), doing different tasks and scour overtim e, if needed.\r\nThe other one †amount of food ready in a day †does show that KFC is applying Capacity leads demand theory (Sasser, 1976). KFC always provides the amount of food slightly over than customer’s demand so as to ensure available service in working time. The food left changes to intemperance because it could not be stored due to KFC’s quality standard. This waste, according to the manager, is not significant and enables to bear with. From the analysis above, it is clear to see that KFC is doing right because the strategy not only fits to identity of fast food market, but also expresses KFC’s customisation, which highly focus on satisfy its customers.\r\nAfter discussing about five performance objectives (Slack et al, 2004) and capacity strategy (Sasser, 1976), the final part will clarify relationship between those and how they support each other.\r\nTHE RELATIONSHIP OF CAPACITY STRATEGY AND FIVE PERFORMANCE OBJECTIVES (Slack et al, 2004)\r\ nBefore having strategy, the objectives have to be set. It could be hardly explained that objectives are the place you want to drive to while strategy is vehicle that helps to get there. For KFC as a whole, the company expresses its concentration on Quality objective through the slogan â€Å"Don’t worry. Eat happy” (http://www.kfc.co.uk/dontworryeathappy) and various actions to be healthier for the customers, such(prenominal) as â€Å"Get fresh inspiration from our delicatessen Deluxe Range”, â€Å"We’re fighting trans-fats, not flavour”, â€Å"We’ve done away with 25% of perfect(a) fats”, or â€Å"Fitted out with green energy”, etc. Quality is known as the vital factor to compete with other big brands like Subway, MacDonald’s, Burger superpower…, and gain fast food market grant when customer’s health concern is change magnitude more and more.\r\n(http://www.propertyweek.com, Domino’s pizza tops the market article)\r\nFIGURE4. FAST-FOOD MARKET SHARE IN THE UK\r\nHowever, for smaller scale, according to the manager of KFC Union Street, the restaurant put Speed objective as their first priority to strive because quality standard as well as promotions is already fixed. â€Å"It is KFC Company’s line of products to upgrade and spread out how good the food is.” †Said the manager †â€Å"Our job is to provide food with the same standard, and serve the customers those come to our restaurant exceed services, and it is speed”. Hence, the restaurant tends to increase the factor it can control, which differentiates it among the others.\r\nFollowing the objective above, the Chase demand plan (Sasser, 1976) is decided to make it done. This strategy fits to fast food restaurant’s identity so as to utilize time, human, and money resources. Then, considering either capacity lags demand, which allows demand never less than capacity or capacity leads demand (Sasser, 1976), which is that capacity always meets forecasted demand, KFC Union Street chose the second one. The restaurant gives up waste in order to better its service for customers. Amount of food available reduces waiting time for delivering, as well as, waiting time to be ordered. The customers would be more satisfied thanks to fast service.\r\nCONCLUSION\r\nTo summarise up, the report is designed from result collected at KFC Union Street, Bristol. With five performance objectives (Slack et al, 2004), capacity, capacity strategy (Sasser, 1976) analysis, it clarified how KFC operates and how theories links to each other, as well as, are applied into practice with particular circumstances.\r\nREFERENCES\r\nDettmer, H.W., 2003. strategical Navigation: A Systems Approach to Business Strategy. ASQ Quality Press.\r\nJames, P., Rowland-Jones, R., O’Brien, L., 2010. operations and Business\r\nSystems management, 2nd Ed., Harlow: Pearson.\r\nSamuelson, capital of Minnes ota A., Nordhaus, William D (2009). Economics, 19th Ed., McGraw-Hill Higher Education.\r\nSlack N, Chambers, S., Johnston R., 2001, Operations management, 3rd Ed., London: Pittman Publishing.\r\nSlack N, Chambers, S., Johnston R., 2001, Operations management, fourth Ed., London: Pittman Publishing.\r\nSlack N, Chambers, S., Johnston R., 2001, Operations management, 5th Ed., Harlow: learner Hall.\r\nSchoenborn, G., 2009, Personal Communication.\r\nStrecker, S., Ulrich, F., 2011. Information Systems and E-Business Management. A modelling method in support of the reflective design and use of performance measurement systems [e-journal] 7(1). Available through: Springer.\r\nhttp://www.kfc.co.uk/dontworryeathappy\r\n'