Green Sourcing Process For French Fry Commodity At McDonald's

In an effort to enhance their image in the eyes of an eco-friendly consumer, McDonalds has hired you to provide specific recommendations for completing each step of the Green Sourcing process, limited to their French fry commodity.

Conduct research to capture a clear view of current French fry sourcing practices at McDonalds. Then, create an outline of the Green Sourcing process for McDonalds. Your outline should include the information defined within each step of the Green Sourcing process that is relevant to sourcing for the production and sale of French fries at McDonalds.

Your paper should include an introduction that contains the purpose statement for your work and the steps to be followed in the narrative. This will demonstrate your understanding of how to approach the assignment, including the literature review and recommendations for action by McDonalds.

The primary purpose of this paper is to evaluate the clear view of the current view of the French Fry sourcing at McDonald Corporation. McDonald's is well known for their French fries all over the country. Now McDonald's trying their best effort to achieve a good position in the eyes of consumers regarding an eco-friendly matter in making French fries. The paper will help in explaining the desired need and the evaluation of the practicing of the Green Sourcing Process for McDonald Corporation.  The green sourcing processes consist of the six crucial steps that need to be evaluated and enhanced with the proper implementation of the action plan, and this will be provided throughout this paper.

The purpose is to enhance each of the six steps involved with the green sourcing processes for The French Fry commodity at McDonald's.

Green sourcing is described as activities that contain reduction, materials needed recycling and reuse in the process of purchasing. For efficiently implanting green sourcing practices the company has to estimate the environmental results of its products. So, McDonald's has to achieve the ability of environmental consequences of its product that is French fries, at every stage of the supply chain process for implementing the Green sourcing practices to upgrade their image in the eyes of eco-friendly consumers (Ahluwalia, 2017). For that McDonalds has to increase their businesses regarding the costs to acquire the potatoes, evaluating the firming practices required to produce good quality of potatoes which they required.

The firm has brought more than 3.4 billion pounds of potatoes from the United States yearly. The company mainly preferred Russet Burbank among other variety of potatoes.  This choice proved costlier to the company. Moreover, the potatoes take too much time to grow, more water requires, and affected by diseases like rot. The result is that farmers have to take measures such as pesticides to maintain the goodness of the potatoes. This causes a harmful impact on the environment because when the wind blows or due to harmful rain dust from the farm carried out to other regions. The activist investor groups have said to McDonald's and their suppliers to assume more maintenance practices. SO, McDonald's has adopted Green Sourcing process to cover the maintenance that is required for sourcing of potatoes on production and sale of French fries at McDonald’s restaurants (Anaf, Baum, Fisher, Harris & Friel, 2017). There are six of the crucial steps of the Green Sourcing process; they are as follows:

This is the first step, and it reveals the desired amount of costs involved within the given category of the products, materials and their maintenance. There are five of the crucial areas which need to be considered to improve the first step of the green sourcing process; these are electricity, energy costs, recycling, packaging and the disposal of the respective material or the products (Chen & Lee, 2015). The costs associated with the sourcing of the French fry at McDonald corporation needs to be adequately analyzed.    

Assessing the opportunity

Assessing the internal supply chain

The second step of the green processes reveals the engaging of the concerned internal supply chain stakeholders to bring out the overall effectiveness and efficiency of the respective products. It becomes vital to understand and identify the desired business requirements along with the product specifications as well as the perspectives of the internal stakeholder’s within the concerned supply chain of the business (Gheribi, 2017). Being the representative at the McDonald Corporation, it is the primary responsibility to verify as well as identify the specifications of the French Fries sold at McDonald Corporation.  

Assessing the supply market

The evaluation of the concerned supply market segments is of great importance as it helps in facilitating the overall growth of the firm to a more significant extent. There needs to be an engagement of the new as well as existing vendors as these contribute towards the development and growth of the concerned business processes (Karlsson & Sköld, 2018). It is also important to cite green opportunities as well as to identify the possible commodity substitutions along with the new and latest manufacturing procedures.

Developing an effective sourcing strategy

This step is considered as crucial as it relates to the development of quality within the product and the quality of the gathered information. This step helps in determining the desired outcome, implementation as well as the continued success for the overall sourcing procedures.

Implementation of the sourcing strategy

The application of vital sourcing strategies is of great importance. Bid analysis or the evaluation of the desired quantifies cots along with the benefits of the concerned sustainability attributes are included in this step (Kung, Rigu, Karau, Gachigi & McDonald, 2015).  Moreover, there should clear identification and communication regarding the evaluation criteria that gains support from the diverse stakeholders within the green sourcing procedure.

Institutionalizing the sourcing strategy

Ate selecting the desired vendors, it is essential for McDonald Corporation to finalize the desired contacts with them and then the procurement process should start.  On the hand, there should closely track the sustainability attributes, and these need to be audited while the final step of the green process (Sanghavi, Rana, Shenoy & Yadav, 2015). The metrics need to be defined appropriately of the supplier based performance, compliance, delivery, etc. Moreover, the sustainability goal of the firm needs to be considered with the results of the outsourcing procedure while compiling with these metrics.

It’s strongly recommended that each of the steps involved with the green sourcing process at McDonald Corporation needs to be executed with great care.  To complete the entire process for the French fry, the collection of the relevant data regarding the execution of the costs and the quality of the material is vital.  It is essential for McDonald Corporation to collaborate ad effectively efficiently with the respective stakeholder as these will improve the overall business processes and condition for the firm.

It is also recommended that there need development and management of the respective supplier relationships for achieving the desired success for the goods and services.  The development of the stronger relationship helps in bringing more profitability towards the firm by reducing or minimizing the risks involved with the business processes.

It is recommended that there should be specificity which refers to the availability of the substitutes of the concerned products.  There are four different types of the supply chain strategies which needs to be adopted by McDonald Corporation to increases the reliability of the entire green sourcing process (Shelman, McLoughlin & Pagell, 2016). There should be a formation of the efficient supply strategies which will aim to create the highest cost efficiency.

It is recommended that the development of the supply chain strategies should be responsive as well as flexible to cope up with the desired changing nature of the concerned business market segments.  There should also be agile supply chain strategies that will aim to be responsive as well as flexible to the respective customers.

The primary focus should also be given for improving the outsourcing process by various means as well as with the help of latest innovative techniques. There have been numerous benefits regarding the following of the outsourcing procedures. Also, it is recommended that the quality of the products along with the services increases the reliability of their business market segments. The primary focus should be given to the best processes or activities those are effectively expected by the firm.

It is recommended that the logistics systems need to be followed properly. I can be done with the help of the execution of the management functions, and the emphasis should be on the lean inventory means.  The application and the implementation of the above recommendations will help in enhancing the entire green sourcing procedure.

References

Ahluwalia, S. (2017). General Considerations in Sourcing Herbs, Spices and Agricultural Commodities in India. Biology, Engineering, Medicine and Science Reports, 3(1).

Anaf, J., Baum, F. E., Fisher, M., Harris, E., & Friel, S. (2017). Assessing the health impact of transnational corporations: a case study on McDonald’s Australia. Globalization and health, 13(1), 7.

Chen, M. F., & Lee, C. L. (2015). The impacts of green claims on coffee consumers’ purchase intention. British Food Journal, 117(1), 195-209.

Gheribi, E. (2017). The Activities of Foodservice Companies in the Area of Corporate Social Responsibility–on the Example of International Fast Food Chain. Journal of Positive Management, 8(1), 64-77.

Karlsson, C., & Sköld, M. (2018). Specialization and commonalization in multi-branded manufacturing corporations: Learnings from automotive industries. International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 38(1), 67-89.

Kung, K. S., Rigu, S. W., Karau, S. K., Gachigi, K., & McDonald, L. (2015). Techno-economic feasibility of green charcoal production in Kenya. In Sustainable Access to Energy in the Global South (pp. 87-100). Springer, Cham.

Sanghavi, P., Rana, Y., Shenoy, S., & Yadav, R. (2015). A review of green supply chain management in the automobile industry. International Journal of Current Engineering and Technology, 5(6), 3697-3702.

Shelman, M., McLoughlin, D., & Pagell, M. (2016). Origin Green: When Your Brand is Your Supply Chain. In Organizing Supply Chain Processes for Sustainable Innovation in the Agri-Food Industry (pp. 205-233). Emerald Group Publishing Limited.