SULTAN KUDARAT STATE UNIVERSITY

ISULAN CAMPUS
9805, Isulan, Sultan Kudarat

ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT

Watch the movie "The Founder"

Answer the following questions:

1. What type of management did the brothers used? Explain.

In the movie “The Founder”, to improve the efficiency of their business,
McDonald brothers Mac and Dick took the assembly line concept perfected by Henry
Ford for cars and applied it to hamburger business. They optimized it for their business
through chalk drawings on a tennis court and orchestration of their team members’
steps. They made sure that speed should not impact quality standards on everything
from cleanliness to the number of pickles per patty .

2. Who is the greedy and how? Explain.

It is obvious in the movie, the one who portrays as a greedy and unethical
narcissist is Ray Kroc, he was a man filled with ambition and nothing would stop him
until he had what he wanted. The original McDonald’s founders were simple men of
integrity, hard-work, and valued their customer, something that was lost in the noise as
American corporations have made their push forward. Ray Kroc bought the rights to
McDonald’s from them after buying up the land underneath their franchise locations and
using banks and franchisees to force a sale. The founders of McDonald’s were woefully
inept and allegedly used a handshake deal for 1% of the company’s profits that never
came to be. Ray Kroc’s story is a distinctly American one; it’s a tale of business success
marked by corporate greed, dodgy backroom deals, and an overwhelming desire for
sameness. Kroc was the salesman who took a small burger restaurant in San
Bernardino, California, franchised it around the country, and turned it into the
McDonald’s Corporation—and he only had to disrespect the wishes of the restaurant’s
actual founders to do it. It’s a rather bleak rise to prosperity, but an interesting one
nonetheless, since so much of Kroc’s skill at spreading McDonald’s around the country
relied on his packaging of a fast-food restaurant as a plain, inoffensive monument to
American family values.

3. What engineering aspect did the brothers used? Explain.

The movie really lays out how Dick McDonald adopted the Industrial
Engineering-101 concepts of assembly, workstations, Pareto-analysis (or 80–20 rule)
and applied it to the food service industry. As the tennis court scene depicts- he was the
finest engineer at solving his problem. He gave his model a USP “fast delivery”- the

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 SULTAN KUDARAT STATE UNIVERSITY
ISULAN CAMPUS
9805, Isulan, Sultan Kudarat

speede service system (as they refer to it). In addition, he also downsizes his menu to
focus on the Top 20% (focusing on “high-movers” instead of the product-mix).

Extrapolating the character, Dick McDonald is an embodiment of the passion

engineers have towards their product or process. Later in the movie, he also exhibits his
staunch stance on the requirements (Quality control of hamburgers). This level of
passion towards his product and brand makes him miss the chance at making a stronger
bottom line (Dollars). While he meets an unfortunate fate of losing the restaurant and the
brand he owned (spoiler), he would not have done so if he had realized that bottom-line
usually runs the show and a good mix of economics and passion is what he needs and
not one over the other.

Unfortunately, this disconnect may often happen with Engineers too. They might
often run behind perfecting their solution/process/product. While we cannot blame them
for their lack of financial empathy right out of school, later on in the career it is the
Engineer’s responsibility to understand the business objectives and prioritize the bigger
picture over the perfect unicorn solution.

4. Looking at the whole picture of the story, is it worth that its happens? Explain.
Yes, although Ray Kroc stole McDonald from the brothers, he transformed
McDonald's into the world’s largest restaurant franchise with the helped of his strict
operational guidelines.

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