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Create Systems for Everything

Published on October 27, 2010 by Steve Thomas in Process

This post is part of our business processes series, looking at the strategies and ideas implemented at Thomas Multimedia.

Create systems for every possible procedure that the business will encounter. This allows people with the lowest possible skills to follow a procedure and produce a predictable, consistent, high quality result.

Think of how McDonalds hires unskilled teenagers and efficiently produces a consistent range of products worldwide. As a former teenage employee of McDonalds I can tell you precisely why our otherwise rag tag team could produce a big mac, exactly the same, in a blistering time, over and over again.

1. Rack up buns on a tray, separating bottom and middle sections, and placing top (crown) on a large spatula
2. Insert lower and middle buns into toaster
3. After about 30 seconds, buns are toasted. Insert crown. Remove bottom and middle bun from toaster. Add cardboard ring around lower bun.
4. Lay as many meat patties as required (2 per burger) onto the double side grill and lower lid. Meat takes 42 seconds to cook.
5. Commence dressing middle and bottom buns with big mac sauce, onions, lettuce. 1x cheese on bottom, 2x pickles on middle.
6. Move tray to grill, before or as grill lid is automatically opening after its cooking time has completed. Add meat.
7. Get crowns from toaster, add to top, wrap and place in production chute.
8. Scrape grill, and repeat the whole process from step 1 again.

I haven’t worked inside a McDonalds since about 2003, and yet the process to create every burger of the day is still stuck like glue in my head. Clearly the head office has recently found further ways to optimize this process, now pre-cooking and using warmers to keep the meat, and dressing the burger at order time rather than using a production chute.

Some people may laugh at working for such a frequently maligned organisation, but I couldn’t care a less. I got a fantastic insight into one of the most successful businesses ever, and the processes that they use to break down language and educational barriers. Every aspect of the operation of every restaurant is the result of a consistent procedural book, and it is a recipe for success on almost any street corner in the world.

Go through every process in your daily job, and write a manual on how to do it. Look for ways to improve the processes. Once you’ve done that, provided you’ve done it well, there is no reason why you can’t hand the manual to someone else to maintain that section of your business.

So it seems big macs are good for us after all!

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