The three different companies that I chose to use for this assignment are McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, and Dell. I tried to pick three different companies that I feel are from the three different types of operating systems.

McDonald’s uses a small batch operating system. They make everything as the customer orders it and on top of that the customers have the ability to further customize it to their taste by adding or removing items from the product.

Wal-Mart uses a mass production operating system. They order mass amount of product and put it on display for the public to view and purchase. There is nothing that you can get customized at Wal-Mart, and unless that are low on stock they always have multiple of everything that thy have on their shelves.

Dell uses a flexible operating system. They produce many of their mainline computers and laptops in bulk. They also have a separate production for computers that have been customized during the ordering process. This way the customized products are still able to be produced at a rapid pace and it will not hinder the production of the other items that are being manufactured.

As for the employees, they are organized differently for the most part. The employee’s at McDonalds are generally cross trained to work in other areas of the business. This way if they have a call off, or let’s say the drive thru is extremely busy and the lobby is not, they are able to move employees from one area to another to help production. Wal-Mart employees are not always cross trained and most of the time they are only trained to work in specific departments within the store. I cannot count the number of times that I have been to Wal-Mart and they only have one or two cash registers open, even though they have 30 or more register lanes at most stores. They still have other people out on the floor but, since they are not register trained