McDonald's France
"Kitchen flow redesigned using TOC — service times dropped significantly."
France is McDonald's most demanding market. TOC flow management made it more efficient.
The challenge
French McDonald's customers eat in narrow peak windows and have high culinary expectations. Service speed is critical, yet the kitchen production flow was not optimized around the true bottleneck. As part of the global "Made For You" rollout, the French operation used TOC to rethink its production logic.
The TOC solution
Eric Bisson, Senior VP Operations & COO at McDonald's France, led an initiative applying TOC flow management (DBR principles) combined with Lean to kitchen and hamburger production flow. The constraint in the production line was identified and subordinated to. Presented at TOCICO 2020.
What happened
The McDonald's France case is significant because it demonstrates TOC's applicability outside industrial settings — in a consumer-facing food service environment with extremely tight cycle times. Eric Bisson's TOCICO 2020 presentation showed how identifying the kitchen constraint and subordinating all other activities to it unlocked throughput that additional equipment and staffing had not been able to deliver.