McDonalds
Supply Chain Review
The first McDonalds restaurant in the United Kingdom opened its doors almost twenty nine years ago and, today, more than one thousand two hundred UK restaurants serve around three million customers every single day. Quite apart from the sheer volumes of product involved, another big difference between a quarter of a century ago and now is the greatly increased range of menu choices on offer. The quantities and diversity involved create significant logistics challenges.
Within the UK, McDonald’s is supported by a distribution network of three warehouses owned and operated by Golden West Foods. Each of the warehouses operates around the clock, handling ambient, chilled and frozen products. Golden West Foods also operates a dedicated fleet of multi-temperature vehicles that deliver to restaurants and collect from suppliers.
Recently, as part of a worldwide programme, McDonald’s decided to review its supply chain operations, to assess the possibilities of improving efficiency and reducing costs. As part of this initiative, McDonald’s and Golden West Foods invited Davies & Robson to provide consultancy support to assist with strategic and operational planning. The key focus areas included:
The latent capacity within the current infrastructure to cope with future volume and product growth.
Identification of likely bottlenecks within the warehouses as volume increases.
Determination of optimum stock cover to support planned growth and service objectives.
Identification of operational changes that could be implemented immediately to reduce cost.
Working closely with the McDonald’s and Golden West Foods logistics teams the study involved a detailed operational and financial review, and the analysis of supply chain data projected forward over the next five years.
As Ian Martin, Chief Purchasing Officer, McDonalds put it: “The working partnership between McDonald’s, Golden West Foods and Davies & Robson operated in a truly very professional manner to deliver the detail analysis and practical solutions we were hoping for. ”
www.mcdonalds.co.uk
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