Taco Bell was Founded in 1962 by Glenn Bell. Taco Bell isseeking a competitive advantage via low cost. Like many services,Taco Bell increasingly relies on its operations function to improveproductivity and reduce cost.

First, it revised the menu and designed meals that were easy toprepare. Taco Bell then shifted a substantial portion of foodpreparation to suppliers who could perform food processing moreefficiently than a stand-alone restaurant. Ground beef wasprecooked prior to arrival and then reheated, as were many dishesthat arrived in plastic boil bags for easy sanitary reheating.Similarly, tortillas arrived already fried, and onions predicted.Efficient layout and automation cut to 8 seconds the time needed toprepare tacos and burritos. These advances have been combined withtraining and empowerment to increase the span of management fromone supervisor for 5 restaurants to one supervisor for 30 ormore.

Operations managers at Taco Bell believe they have cut in-storelabor by 15 hours per day and reduced floor space by more than 50%.The result is a store that can handle twice the volume with halfthe labor. Effective operations management has resulted inproductivity increases that support Taco Bell’s low-cost strategy.Taco Bell is now the fast-food low-cost leader and has a 79% shareof the Mexican fast-food market

Instructions:

Please answer the questions below. Please keep your answersshort and concise. In Question 2, for each operationalimprovement, please start your answer by clarifying whether theimpact on productivity is “positive” or “negative” and then providefurther analysis. Please answer the two questions in this Wordfile. Please keep the same format (MS Word) and submit it viaSafeAssign. Thank you!

Questions

1. List all operational improvements at Taco Bell.
2. Justify the impact of these improvements on the productivity ofTaco Bell.