McDonald's Restaurants
Managing McDonald’s Information Flow
McDonald’s Restaurants has 730 stores across Australia and their design is updated quarterly. This can range from an upgrade in line with a new product offering or piece of equipment, to a large-scale refurbishment such as integrating a McCafé.
Challenges
Every McDonald’s redesign requires the effective communication of a large volume of documentation between internal teams and up to 50 external consultants such as architects, surveyors, interior decorators and designers. These documents include: restaurant layouts, design guidelines, operating procedures, style guides for internal imagery, high resolution photographs and graphics libraries.
Fundamentally, all store upgrades need to be made to exact specifications and company standards, and any delay in transferring information can result in longer project timelines and an increase in cost. It is therefore central to the success of each store upgrade that documents are managed securely, efficiently and accurately.
Until 2003, McDonald’s managed their flow of information using a combination of paper documents, files on CDs, couriers, file archives in multiple locations, email and fax. Major signage updates were communicated at an annual or semi-annual conference.
McDonald’s found this method of information management time-consuming, expensive and difficult to control. And the use of events meant that a large amount of information was being distributed once or twice a year, rather than continuously in real-time.
Solution
McDonald’s identified the need for a facilities information management solution that would increase their control over information, reduce administrative time and costs, and streamline collaboration with consultants. Given the number of people that would use it, the solution also needed to be easy to implement and easy to use. After a review of available systems, McDonald’s selected the Aconex online information management service.
Aconex stores all company documentation online in one secure site, meaning that both internal and external teams working on a store upgrade have instant access to information and can view, track, search and share documents in real time.
Through storing and sharing documents electronically, costs such as filing, printing, packaging and postage are significantly reduced. Aconex also provides fast downloading of large files, which is essential for transferring the high resolution photographs McDonald’s use to communicate changes.
Documents stored on Aconex can be updated on the system then distributed within the company. A transmittal function ensures everyone is working on the latest document - automatically alerting all participants of updates. This reduces manual processes and eliminates the risk of work being based on outdated information.
All documents are automatically tracked and fully searchable, with a full revision history available. This ensures that McDonald’s have complete control over their information and there is no chance of information loss.
To ensure smooth implementation, Aconex provides unlimited training and 24/7 support to all project participants, including McDonald’s employees and third party vendors.
Results
Within two years, McDonald’s Australia has stored more than 150,000 documents on Aconex, all of which can be accessed instantly by both internal and external teams.
Nicholas Lyras, McDonald’s Design Project Manager, manages the process for communicating store design changes such as store design, new equipment or new products. Lyras is responsible for ensuring master documents and drawing changes are distributed to consultants; hence is a primary user of Aconex.
Lyras said: “Aconex is a great tool that helps us streamline communication. It is a good choice for us as we can use it 24 hours a day if required. Through using Aconex, there are definitely time and cost savings. Plus security, across the board, is critical, so we can control risk by assigning unique passwords to access Aconex.”
Since implementing Aconex, Lyras has also experienced easier collaboration with McDonald’s overseas offices.
“Another area we’ve found Aconex useful is collaborating with our US colleagues. Previously, due to the size of these files and reliability issues with FTP sites, the only way to transmit large files between Australia and the US had been by mailing discs. Through Aconex, we can quickly upload a file in Australia – even large documents and high resolution images - and this file can then be immediately accessed and printed in the US.”
Effective information management is vital for McDonald’s when communicating store designs. McDonald’s most significant recent store remodeling program has been the rollout of McCafés across Australia. McDonald’s started using Aconex in 2002 and at that time there were 28 McCafés. Over the past three years, that figure has increased to 315 – an average of eight openings per month.
Anne Love, McDonald’s Development Director - Design, runs McDonald’s design department. Love said: “I don’t think we would have been able to manage and control the growth of McCafés if we hadn’t used Aconex.
“Everything we do is designed to make things quicker and easier for our consultants and for our internal construction people, so that we just keep churning out upgrades for new stores. Through using Aconex, consultants can now pull down documents themselves and then, when they do a remodel and the documents change, they just put up the new version. So we’ve always got the latest set of drawings for every store available as soon as they’re ready.”
Love said McDonald’s also experienced an increase in efficiency when disseminating information.
“With our manuals, rather than producing a massive binder of documents that has to go out to 30 people around the country, we can now just update a chapter and publish it directly on Aconex - then the consultants receive it straight away. This means we are able to change things more often than previously because of the reduced costs and labor involved, compared with physically publishing the manuals and documents.
“In the past, to communicate and explain updates to our signage library, we would have done a conference or an event on an annual or semi-annual basis. But now we can convey that information in real-time. So we’re more-or-less drip-feeding changes rather than doing a big chunk.”
Through transferring information electronically, McDonald’s reduced their costs and administrative labor.
Love said: “Previously when doing a store update project, one of our employees had to print and post the documents to all those involved. So there were four days leading up to the project where she would be completely out of action. With Aconex, it’s instant. There is no printing or packaging or burning discs, which enables our employees to work on more productive projects and saves a great deal of cost.”
Aconex was particularly beneficial when McDonald’s recently launched a new product menu across Australia.
Love said: “We did a significant equipment rollout the year before last when we introduced Deli Choices, so that required every store to get audited and measured, and proposed plans for new sections of the kitchen to be done. We did that all through Aconex.
“If we hadn’t used Aconex, we would have had to go in 750 times and download the kitchen layout, get it to a consultant for them to update it. It would have been an incredible amount of work for us just in churning out what we had and getting it back.
“This would have taken us at least 3-4 weeks for 2 people full-time. With Aconex, the only time it took was about 10 minutes for the users to download the documents.”
Conclusion
Through using Aconex as a solution to facilities information management, McDonald’s Restaurants increased their productivity and control, reduced their administrative costs, and streamlined communication.
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