CASE

STUDY
BAMA PIE

Submitted To:
Prof. Sekhar V

Submitted By:
GAURAV KUMAR
08PG304
Marketing B
Bama Pie Limited - Tulsa

Bama’s mission is a show stopper. Bama wants everyone it comes in contact with to be successful.

That is actually the mission statement of The Bama Companies, in Tulsa, Oklahoma - People helping
people be successful. It includes not only customers, but also employees, suppliers and the surrounding
community.

Bama helps people become more successful through its own success. More than doubling its size in the
early 1990s, Bama doubled its business with an existing customer, McDonald’s, and added major
business with Pizza Hut and Nabisco. Other customers include Food Lion, TCBY, QuikTrip, Homeland,
Kroger and Sav A Lot.

Bama Pie was born in the kitchen of Cornillia Alabama Marshall about 1920. “Grandma Bama” baked pies
and sold them at the drugstore fountain where she worked. Her son, Paul Marshall, began to work full
time for the family company at age 16. He moved to Tulsa and established the current company in 1937.

Twenty-eight years later (in 1965), 50-year-old Paul Marshall made an unannounced sales call to Ray
Kroc, founder of McDonald’s. Kroc was impressed and worked with Marshall in developing a McDonald’s
pie. But he made no guarantee that McDonald’s would make a single purchase.

Three years later, McDonald’s made its first purchase. Bama has produced McDonald’s apple and cherry
pies ever since. Of course, as McDonald’s grew, Bama also grew from supplying a few hundred to 11,000
McDonald’s restaurants.

When Marshall retired in 1984, his daughter Paula Marshall-Chapman became the new CEO. She soon
faced a major crisis. Due to product quality issues, McDonald’s demanded that Bama make an
improvement in pie quality, or risk losing McDonald’s as a customer.

The solution, it seemed, was to increase inspections to remove defects. But Marshall-Chapman was
convinced that the ultimate answer was not in identifying and discarding defective products. Through
reading Quality Is Free by Philip Crosby, she learned a new concept about quality which enabled Bama to
improve processes and prevent flawed products before they occurred.

Bama’s turnaround was so dramatic and impressive that McDonald’s wanted Bama to create and make
ready-to-bake biscuits for restaurants west of the Mississippi. This required building a $40,000,000
second plant, capable of producing millions of biscuits a day. In 1991, Bama introduced McDonald’s new
baked apple pie, replacing the original fried pie in response to changing consumer preferences. Growth of
the McDonald’s business continues; Bama opened a plant in Beijing in 1993 to produce apple and
pineapple pies for McDonald’s restaurants in China. Also in 1991, Bama acquired new business with
Pizza Hut. This partnership has been so successful that Bama has in recent years secured additional
business, requiring construction of Bama’s third US manufacturing plant.

Quality begins at the top

Bama’s leadership clearly leads the way in the company’s commitment to quality “When our senior
management fully committed to quality practices, exciting things really began to happen for our company”,
Marshall- Chapman said. “We saved millions of dollars and experienced phenomenal growth.”

Bama is also actively involved in the quality movement at McDonald’s. “McDonald’s recognizes Bama’s
leadership in quality. We are involved in several McDonald’s teams, including one that is developing a
Malcolm Baldrige-type award process for McDonald’s suppliers, another that is creating a supplier
development process, and the McDonald’s total quality council”, said Brenda Rice, vice-president of
McDonald’s Customer Service and Product Development.

The Bama Quality Process (BQP)

“Crosby’s philosophy helped Bama become involved in quality”, said Mark Smith, vice president of People
and Quality Systems. “We eventually needed something more specific to our needs. The answer came
when we created the Bama Quality Process.”

“The BQP is not something that is grafted on to Bama’s day-today operations; it defines the way the
company does business. It is a mindset of continuous improvement enabling us to better serve our
internal and external customers”, states Mike Frihart, manager of Quality Systems.

The BQP focuses on customer satisfaction, which depends on employee involvement, innovation and
flexibility. At the core of the Bama approach to quality are the company’s mission, vision and values. “Our
mission addresses, Why are we here?”, Marshall-Chapman explains. “Our vision identifies, Where are we
going? and our values address, What do we stand for?”.

 Bama’s mission is…people helping people be successful.

 Bama’s vision is…to delight our customers with the Bama experience…again and again by
setting the standard, and being the best, in our products, our services and our people.
 Bama’s values centre around:

o Customers
o Passion
o People
o Products and services
o Quality
o Suppliers

Has the Bama quality process worked? “The quality improvement process which has evolved into BQP
has resulted in a reduction of customer complaints on baked apple pies and biscuits by 70 per cent since
1992”, Mike McKee, Bama’s chief operating officer reports. “It is also the reason that Bama makes the
Gold Standard Product for Pizza Hut and the international Target Sample Pie for McDonald’s, the product
all other manufacturers must match.”

Quick response

Bama feels a critical reason for its growth is found in its ability to respond to the needs of its customers.
Quick response enables Bama to help its customers reach the marketplace in a shorter time. Bama takes
an active part in product development while concurrently working on production capability. While many
companies spend two years and longer in product development alone, Bama has successfully created
and begun manufacturing new products in three months or less. Management of multiple tasks during the
development process reduces the total cycle time. This has enabled the company to penetrate new
market niches quickly when opportunities arise.

Employee involvement

Bama believes that the people closest to a problem will develop the best solution, so it empowers its
employees to make decisions and implement changes that affect company operations. A work team
philosophy in many areas enables employees to change their role and interaction with the company
significantly. Employees apply their communications and technical training in their jobs and on teams
where they share significant responsibility for problem solving.

For example, Bama created a “diagonal-sliced team” to complete a socio-technical analysis of its Bama
Foods Biscuit production plant and develop recommendations to improve how work gets done, how
communication flows and how the employees are managed. The team comprised about 15 per cent of the
workforce. It made 12 recommendations. Eleven were accepted and are currently being implemented by
an implementation team.

“The beauty of employee involvement is that two heads are better than one”, reflects Smith, “We realize
that the power of 500 minds is greater than the power of five. We also believe strongly in personal growth.
It’s a satisfaction issue. People who get a chance to interact and make a difference stick around longer.
We haven’t gotten everybody as involved as we want, but that’s the direction we’re moving. Every
success we’ve enjoyed was made possible by our people.”

Planning

“Profit is not the number one concern at Bama”, Marshall-Chapman said. “Our customers, our employees,
and our suppliers are our greatest concern. Bama is trying to consider various aspects of the business
instead of just saying we’re going to grow the business by 15 per cent. We don’t want to lose sight of the
importance of customer and employee satisfaction. We also are constantly searching for ways to improve
our processes. If we take care of our people and processes, the profit will happen automatically.” Bama
also improves processes and results by conducting annual planning sessions with its senior staff. To
facilitate more comprehensive, focused planning, Bama identified four key voices to listen to:

 Voice of the customer. Listening to what the people who buy Bama products or services are
saying.
 Voice of the process. Listening to how the business and production processes are performing
by using measurement and a systematic approach to problem solving.
 Voice of the employee. Listening to what the company’s people are saying about the workplace.
 Voice of reason. Listening to the needs of the business. Does it make sense? Is it the right thing
to do?