Total Quality Management is a strategy that is employed by firms to improve quality and performance, aiming at satisfying or exceeding the clients’ expectations. Such expectations are possible when all quality related functions are integrated in the entire firm. Total Quality Management is the management of inventiveness and procedures that endeavor at production of high quality products and services.
For companies to function and operate in accordance to the Total Quality management strategy, they need to break down external and internal barriers. Consequently, when the departmental barriers are broken down in a company, employees are able to work in harmony with other departments.
The harmony is as a result of employees being able to work cooperatively, with respect, mutual trust and appreciation for the success of their colleagues at work. Organizations that are not successful in overcoming departmental barriers are not able to ensure delivery of products and services that supersede customers’ expectations.
These are mostly those firms that fail in establishing strong teams within their organizations. They fail to build strong teams in their firms since they concentrate on short term objectives, rather than focusing on long term organizational benefits that will help their firms’ survive for a longer period and especially during challenging moments such as economic recessions and product differentiations.
Companies focus on short term goals by rewarding specific departments or individuals who meet their targets. This boosts unnecessary competition among employees and between departments that negatively affects the establishment of effective teams in such firms.
It is noted that internal and external barriers in firms impends the flow of information, boost pursuit of subunit objectives and are mostly not in line with the firms’ overall goals. Some examples of internal barriers are departmental and organizational levels, while external barriers include barriers between the company and its customers, suppliers, investors and communities.
The best strategies to eradicate external and internal barriers include establishing cross-functional teams, improved communication and incorporating appropriate corporate cultures as well as instilling positive attitudes among the various stakeholders involved. The successes of MacDonald chain of restaurants to break the internal and external barriers have greatly boosted its vibrant performance (Nanospeck, 2011).
The popular McDonald’s fast food restaurants started as a simple restaurant in San Bernardino in California. The restaurant initially was being run by two brothers namely Dick and Mac McDonald and was selling milk shake machines. When Raymond Croc, a salesman heard about the success of the business, he convinced the two brothers to let him join them. In 1963 the restaurant had become a success.
Nowadays, the McDonald’s fast food restaurants have more than 30,000 restaurants in over one hundred countries. Moreover, statistics show that approximately 40% of Americans take their meals outside their homes and surprisingly, one out of four Americans who take their food outside their homes eat at McDonald’s fast food restaurants. The restaurants offer food to more than 5 million people daily (Olson, 2009).
Most people have wondered how some companies like McDonald’s are very successful. Research has shown that those companies that are able to excel like the McDonald chain of restaurants achieve their success as a result of their management skill to effectively develop, acquire and manage resources that help the firms to establish a competitive advantage over their rivals.
McDonald has been successful in establishing a world class standard and a global brand. The success of the restaurants has been associated with the ability of its management to develop good relationships with a wide range of people who have a stake in their business or the organizations they relate with.
The current high competition especially in the restaurant industry requires companies to maintain good associations by establishing good networks and cooperation to remain competitive (Ulrich & Smallwood, 2008).
The McDonald restaurants have been successful in breaking the internal and external barriers that greatly impend on the success of the business. The management of the restaurants ensures that all the departments within the restaurants operate in harmony with each other. The management guarantees such harmony by building strong teams that comprises of members from different departments.
The presence of cross-functional teams helps to make sure that the restaurants operates as whole entities and all departments are in pursuit of the overall organizational goals, but not operating as subunits. The harmony among the different departments present in the restaurants ensures that information among different departments is shared accordingly to enhance the performance of the restaurants.
The accord between the sales department and the production department is very important in the success of the McDonald restaurants. The marketing and sales department work very closely with the production department. This is because the sales and the marketing people come into daily contact with the restaurants’ customers.
Therefore, the sales and marketing people are able to identify the needs of the customers and advice the production department accordingly in order to ensure that the products offered by McDonald restaurants meet the expectations of their customers. This had greatly helped the restaurants to excel since it has enabled the restaurants’ management to identify the changing needs of their customers and respond accordingly.
For example, the McDonald restaurants faced a great set back in 2002. Their failure had been caused by focusing more on expanding their restaurants and in the process compromising on their quality. In 2003, the McDonald restaurants sales had greatly reduced. Its management requested the marketing team to conduct a market research on why their sales had considerably decreased.
The research revealed that their sales had reduced because many people had opted to buy healthier foods from other restaurants since they considered McDonald foods as junky food. The marketing department advised the production department to diversify their production by including new menus that oferred healthier food.
Apart from establishing strong internal relations, the McDonald restaurants realized the need to strengthen its external relations. The restaurant management initiated new strategies that were aimed at enhancing their relationships with external stakeholders. For instance, the management encouraged their suppliers to offer their opinions and ideas concerning the facility design.
Moreover, they requested their benchmark retailers’ leaders to produce cleaner and smarter restaurants. Inclusions of these new strategies have greatly improved the performance of the McDonald restaurants greatly (Olson, 2009).
The McDonald’s restaurant was established on the basis of providing clients quality, cleanliness, services and value. Since its establishment up to date, McDonald promotes these values as well as giving back to the communities that assists it to conduct its business. It has a culture of celebrating its achievements and simultaneously striving to greater heights.
It emphasizes on transacting all their businesses with honest, integrity and rewarding its employees who enable them to realize its goals. Apart from its strategic culture, McDonald also emphasizes on vital principles that guide it in its pursuit for exceeding customers’ expectations and beliefs.
It achieves this by excelling in its three business strategies that include franchise, suppliers partnership and corporate. McDonald’s culture includes a passion for amplifying and protecting its brand and adaptation of a collaborative strategy as its management approach.
The culture of the MacDonald is stable, it stresses on the importance of a set of beliefs and norms that direct and control the employees, rather than relying on formalized control systems. The MacDonald’s mostly uses its norms and beliefs, rather than formalized systems to control the behaviors of its employees.this strategy has greatly enabled MacDonald to excel to greater heights.
The workforce at MacDonald are intrinsically motivated to perform and devout all their energy to see the success of MacDonald. On the other hand, management at McDonald have realized that use of formalized system kills the morale of employees and employees do not work for the success of their organizations, but for fear not to loss their employment.
Such attitudes lead to low productions and poor quality services that greatly compromise productions. MacDonald has engaged Hamburger University to help it impart appropriate principles of business to over 5,000 of its employees annually.
The institution has greatly helped MacDonald to develop highly committed workforce. MacDonald’s employees and customers cherish services with a smile, fast food, cleanliness, and bright lights. MacDonald’s strategic corporate culture has helped the industry to build a strong team where every partisan is aware of his/her duties and is willing to execute them passionately (Megan, 2009).
McDonald chains of restaurants have been successful as a result of the ability of its management to remove the internal and external barriers that inhibit the establishment of successful cross-function teams. In addition, the McDonald’s strategic corporate culture that promotes strong relationships between all the stakeholders that are involved in its business helps it to enhance its performance greatly.
Reference List
Megan, P. (2009). Cultural Differences: McDonald’s in Japan. Web.
Nanospeck. (2011). Edwards W Deming’s 14 Management Principles Points in Quality Management. Web.
Olson, M. (2009). The McDonald’s Success Story. Web.
Ulrich, D. & Smallwood, N. (2008).Aligning Firm, Leadership, and Personal Brand. Leader To Leader Journal, 47, 1.