3. Present case facts and information; limitations and constraints4. Present alternative approaches to solving the problem

3. The case involves the transition of McDonald’s kitchens all over the United States to a smoother, faster and more flexible kitchen system called the “Made-For-You” operating system where the process would be more consistent with the increasing demand and diversity in the items on the menu. Although the McDonalds system was very effective, it was only because it was tailor-made for just a few types of sandwiches, generally in bulk, to meet two peak demand periods per day. The market, however, started to change and the McDonalds system cannot accommodate just pre-made sandwiches. The process had to be converted in order to make room for meal options prepared to order.

In order to overhaul the existing process, the management of McDonalds had to come up with a process where technology would come into play. According to Bob Marshall, the Assistant Vice President of US Operations, here is how the process works: “One was to be able to get orders to the kitchen and to be able to route it to the person who is best able to handle the next order. And helping us to affect the overall flow of product through the kitchen, we used technology certainly in the cooking process of toasting buns but again the objective of this was to use technology in a place where technology would help the crew or assist the crew and not require the crew to do things differently.”

The problem that arose in this seemingly ideal process is that six (6) months after implementation, only 2200 restaurants had been converted to the “Made-For-You” system. According to their initial plan, they were supposed to finish at least 160 stores per week, and by the six-month mark, should have completed over 4000 restaurants. Efforts on the part of McDonalds to convert their restaurants seemed slow.

The problem is actually rooted in 2 major aspects—their staff, and the suppliers. At the time of the implementation, US businesses had undergone a major reorganization where most of their staff support functions from the home office were transferred to the 5 division offices around the country. The new process however required that the support would come from the main office so now the implementation of the process would have to be controlled and done by the division offices (field offices). In line with this aspect, each division would have to plan their own implementation from their unique perspective and needs, there would be an increase in demand of new equipment form the two major equipment suppliers of McDonalds. The suppliers would face a huge increase in demand and would then exceed their capacity to provide for each division.

In order to address those issues, McDonalds put together a cross-functional restaurants team to answer the challenges that the “Made-For-You” initiative presented. The team established a “Made-For-You” board made up from the functional areas of the business here, whether it be operations, their P.O.S group, the equipment supply group as well as one member of each of the 5 divisions whose primary task is to oversee communication with the McDonalds restaurants across the US, which were simultaneously undergoing implementation. The team also constructed a common database which contains information on scheduling and supplies and enables McDonalds to track the progress of the implementation throughout the US.

After 18 months, 12,300 restaurants out of 12,600 or 98% of their restaurants have entirely restructured the kitchen and computer systems. They trained every member of the McDonalds team adapt to and effectively use the new system. The ‘Made-For-You’ system required not only a technological change in their restaurants but also a new employee philosophy where communication is almost as important as the product.

4. Another way that this problem could have been solved was to have a longer time frame. It seemed that in 6 months, they were under a lot of pressure to convert 4000 restaurants all over the country. Had they done the conversion gradually, then the following problems would not have arisen. The development of the over-all game plan prior to the implementation could have gone smoothly for McDonalds.

Also, instead of implementing the change to all restaurants drastically, they could have been selected strategic stores across the country and observed how the change would affect the process of making the food. Although it was not stated that problems with customers have arisen due to the change in process, such gradual change to selected stores could have forestalled the bigger and wide-scale issues.