Tag Archives: unintended consequences

Uncategorized

Not all McDonald’s franchise owners “lovin” the new menu

By Kim Smiley

Are you “lovin’ it” now that McDonald’s offers breakfast all day? If so, you are not alone because McDonald’s has stated that extended breakfast hours had been the number one request by customers. After recent declines in sales, McDonald’s is hoping that all-day breakfast will boost profits, but some franchise owners are concerned that extending breakfast hours will actually end up hurting their businesses.

Offering breakfast during the day is not as simple as it may sound because McDonald’s are now required to offer breakfast in addition to their regular fare.   Cooking only hash browns in the fryers is inherently simpler than figuring out how to cook both hash browns and fries at the same time. Basically, attempting to prepare breakfast simultaneously with traditional lunch and dinner items creates a more complicated workflow in the kitchen. Complication generally slows things down, which can be a major problem for a fast food restaurant.

If customers get annoyed at increased wait times, they may choose to visit one of the many other fast food restaurants, rather than McDonald’s, for their next meal out. Many franchisees are investing in more kitchen equipment and increasing staffing to support extended breakfast hours, both of which can quickly eat into the button line.  Increased profits from offering all-day breakfast will need to balance out the cost required to support it or franchise owners will lose money.

Franchise owners have also expressed concern that customers may spend less money now that breakfast is an option after 11 am.  Breakfast items in general are less expensive than other fare and if customers choose to order an egg-based sandwich for lunch rather than a more expensive hamburger it could potentially cut into profits.  It all depends on the profit margin on each individual menu item, but restaurants need to make sure they aren’t offering items that will compete with their more profitable offerings.

The changing menu also has the potential to frustrate customers (and frustrated customers will generally find somewhere else to buy their next lunch).  The addition of all-day breakfast has resulted in menu changes at many McDonald’s and more menu variability between franchises.  The larger the menu offered the more difficult it is to create cheap food quickly so some less popular items like wraps have been cut at many McDonald’s locations to make room for breakfast.  If you are a person who loves wraps and doesn’t really want an egg muffin, this move is pretty annoying.  The other potential problem is that most McDonald’s are only offering either the English muffin-based sandwiches or the biscuit-based sandwiches (but not both) after the traditional breakfast window.  So depending on the McDonald’s, you may be all fired up for an all-day breakfast Egg McMuffin to be told that you still need to get there before 10:30 am to order one since about 20 percent of McDonald’s have chosen to go with biscuit-based breakfast sandwiches instead.

 

There are multiple issues that need to be considered to really understand the impacts of switching to all-day breakfast.  Even seemingly simple “problems” like this can quickly get complicated when you start digging into the details.  A Cause Map, a visual root cause analysis, can be used to intuitively lay out the potential issues from adding all-day breakfast to menus at McDonald’s.  A Cause Map develops cause-and-effect relationships so that the problem can be better understood.  To view a Cause Map for this example, click on “Download PDF” above.

Studies have found that at least one quarter of American adults eat fast food everyday (which could be its own Cause Map…) so there are a lot of dollars being spent at McDonald’s and its competitors. Only time will tell if all-day breakfast will help McDonald’s gobble up a bigger market share of the fast food pie, but fast food restaurants will certainly continue trying to outdo each other as long as demand remains high.

Root Cause Analysis - Incident Investigation

Unintended Consequences, Serendipity, and Prawns

By ThinkReliability Staff

The Diama dam in Senegal was installed to create a freshwater reservoir. Unfortunately, that very dam also led to an outbreak of schistosomiasis. This was an unintended consequence: a negative result from something meant to be positive.   Schistosomiasis, which weakens the immune system and impairs the operation of organs, is transmitted by parasitic flatworms. These parasitic flatworms are hosted by snails. When the dam was installed, the snails’ main predators lost a migration route and died off. Keeping the saltwater out of the river allowed algae and plants that feed the snails to flourish. The five why analysis of the issue would go something like this: The safety goal is impacted. Why? Because of an outbreak of schistosomiasis. Why? Because of the increase in flatworms. Why? Because of the increase in snails. Why? Because of the lack of snail predators. Why? Because of the installation of the dam.

Clearly, there’s more to it. We can capture more details about this issue in a Cause Map, or visual form of root cause analysis. First, it’s important to capture the impact to the goals. In this case, the safety goal is impacted because of a serious risk to health and the environmental goal is impacted due to the spread of parasitic flatworms. The customer service goal (if we consider customers as all those who get water from the reservoir created by the dam) is impacted due to the outbreak of schistosomiasis.

Beginning with the safety goal, we can ask why questions. Instead of including just one effect, we include all effects to create a map of the cause-and-effect relationships. The serious risk to health is caused by the villagers suffering from schistosomiasis, which can cause serious health impacts. The villagers are infected with schistosomiasis and do not receive effective treatment. Not all those infected are receiving drugs due to cost and availability concerns. The drugs do not reverse the damage already done. And, most importantly, even those treated are quickly reinfected as they have little choice but to continue to use the contaminated water.

The outbreak of schistosomiasis is caused by the spread of parasitic flatworms, which carry the disease. The increase in flatworms is caused by the increased population of snails, which host the flatworms. The snail population increased after the installation of the dam killed off their predators and increased their food supply.

Many solutions to this issue were attempted and found to be less than desirable. Administering medication for treatment on its own wasn’t very effective, because (as described above) the villagers kept getting reinfected. The use of molluscicide killed off other animals in the reservoir as well. Introducing crayfish to eat the snails was derided by environmentalists as they were considered an invasive species. But they were on the right track. Now, a team is studying the reintroduction of the prawns which ate the snails. During the pilot study, the rates of schistosomiasis decreased. In addition, the prawns will serve as a valuable food source. This win-win solution is an example of serendipity and should actually return money to the community. Says Michael Hsieh, the project’s principal investigator and an assistant professor of urology, “The broad potential of this project is validation of a sustainable economic solution that not only addresses a major neglected tropical disease, but also holds the promise of breaking the poverty cycle in affected communities.”

Introducing animals to get rid of other animals can be problematic, as Macquarie Island discovered when they introduced cats to eat their exploding rodent population who ate the native seabirds). (Click here to read more about Macquarie Island.) Further research is planned to ensure the project will continue to be a success. To learn more about the project, click here. Or, click “Download PDF” to view an overview of the Cause Map.

Root Cause Analysis - Incident Investigation

San Francisco’s Stinking Sewers

By ThinkReliability Staff

The Golden Gate City is well known for its ground-breaking, environmentally-friendly initiatives.  In 2007 San Francisco outlawed the use of plastic bags at major grocery stores.  The city also mandated compulsory recycling and composting programs in 2009.  Both ordinances were the first laws of their kind in the nation, and criticized by some for being overly aggressive.  Likewise San Francisco’s latest initiative, to reduce city water usage by encouraging the use of low-flow toilets, has faced harsh criticism.

Recently San Francisco began offering substantial rebates to homeowners and businesses to install high efficiency toilets (HETs).  These types of toilet use 1.28 gallons or less per flush, down from the 1.6 gpf versions required today by federal law and even older 3.4 gpf toilets from decades ago.  That means that an average home user will save between 3,800 to 5,000 gallons of water per year per person.  In dollars, that’s a savings of $90 annually for a family of four.  This can quickly justify the cost of a new commode, since a toilet is expected to last 20 years.

Aside from cost savings, there are obvious environmental benefits to reduced water use.  The city initially undertook the HET rebate initiative to decrease the amount of water used overall by the city and the amount of wastewater requiring treatment.  They were successful, and water usage decreased.  In fact, the city’s Public Utilities Commission stated that San Francisco residents reduced their water consumption by 20 million gallons of water last year.  San Francisco last year used approximately 215 million gallons per day.  This also met other goals the city had, such as reducing costs to consumers.  Unintentionally though, the HET rebate initiative impacted a different goal – Customer Service.

As shown on the associated Cause Map, reduced water flow had a series of other effects.  While water consumption – and presumably waste water disposal – shrank significantly, waste production has remained constant.  Despite $100M in sewage systems upgrades over the past five years, current water flow rates are not high enough to keep things moving through the system.  As a result sewage sludge builds up in sewer lines.  As bacteria eat away at the organic matter in the sludge, hydrogen sulfide is released.  Hydrogen sulfide is known for its characteristic “rotten egg” smell.

This creates an unfortunate situation.  No one wants to walk through smelly streets.  Further, slow sewage means a build-up of potential harmful bacteria.  However, everyone agrees San Francisco should strive to conserve water.  Water is a scarce and increasingly expensive resource in California.  What’s the next step in solving the stinking sewer problem?

San Francisco is not the first city to deal with this issue.  There is substantial debate over the city’s current plan to purchase $14M in bleach to clean up the smell.   Many parties are concerned about potential environmental impacts and potential contamination to drinking water.  Other solutions have been proposed by environmental activists, but may have financial ramifications.

Cause Maps can help all parties come to agreement because they focus problem solvers on the goals, not the details of the problem.  In this case, all parties are trying to protect the environment and reduce costs to city residents.  Based on those goals and the Cause Map, potential solutions have been developed and placed with their corresponding causes.  The next step is to proactively consider how these new actions might affect the stakeholders’ goals.  Perhaps other goals could be impacted, such as the safety of drinking water and potential contamination of San Francisco Bay.  Financial goals will surely be impacted to varying degrees with each solution.  Revising the Cause Map can help identify the pros and cons of each approach and narrow down which solution best satisfies all parties.