Operations and Materials Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Operations and Materials Management - Essay ExampleCompanies keep on upgrading themselves to gain emulous edge and keep up with changing demands and preferences of consumers. This paper is to observe and analyze the operations and materials management of troika hards- McDonalds, world wide chain of fast provender restaurant Panda Express, a fast viands Asian cuisine restaurant Wendys, quick service hamburger company. All the three companies have a well set operations management that foc practices on acquiring the raw material cost in effect process the raw material to make it ready to bring it out to the shelf for the final use by consumer. This is typical of the Wendys operations and its business strategy (Stevenson, 1996). The common thing about the three large firms is that entirely three have well plotted and strategically designed Standard in operation(p) Procedures in addition to their indigenous solution in relation to the nature of industry they are well-to-do in. I n order to avoid huge amount of capital investment in acquiring and make the infrastructure, McDonalds and Panda Express sells franchisee to local investors. McDonalds is a fast food restaurant catering to all classes of consumers crossways its chain of set ups globally it relies on providing fresh food to its consumers in the quickest cadence possible. The samara to its success globally irrespective of the geographical or cultural barriers has been its use of Just In cadence (JIT) inventory management system. This system keeps a complete track of the available stock against the current and rising demand of the raw material. It helps avoiding overstocking and under stocking at any given time thus, ensuring healthy and fresh food for consumers (MacDonald, 2000, p. 263). The McDonalds management strategically makes a decision on keeping the labor cost low by scheduling the ringlet as per the store rush depending on peak and non-peak hours. Scheduling of staff roster is one stra tegy that has been found to be common to all the three companies being analyzed. In all the cases, there is a team of trained staff, where each member is not only specialized to complete a specific task, but also trained to handle more tasks at the same time in case they are required to do so. The companies encourage multi-tasking at their establishments. It helps in scheduling the roster on the basis of peak and non-peak hours as the staff strength is broadly speaking kept low during the non-peak hours, which requires both team member to handle more than just their specific task. On the other hand, during the non-peak hours the work force out at all the three firms is so stationed that one individual handles one desk that he specializes in. The well planned and consistent operation process across their chain of establishments and trained staff ensures low cost and cleanse the overall efficiency. The operating systems adopted by the three firms are primarily the same irrespecti ve of the direct an employee holds in the organization. Costs associated with operations maintenance and monitoring in a company can generally be put under five different headers, which are plant, inventory, labor, raw materials, and distribution. All the costs associated with a company can broadly be classified into two categories, fixed costs and variable costs. As the terms imply, fixed costs are the ones that are incurred irrespective of the running status of a firm and variable costs are ones that are incurred at various stages of operations, like equipment maintenances, labor costs, plant