Industry 4.0 And Digital Leadership Research

Introduction. Report objectives. Industry 4. 0 and its Key Technologies. Industry 4. Key technologies for Industry 4. Critical discussion of adoption of Industry 4. 0 of McDonald’s. Technologies used by McDonald’s. Digital capabilities created by McDonald’s. ValUABle. Rare. Inimitable. Non-substitutability. Digital Leaders and their characteristics. Digital leadership styles and adoption by McDonald’s. Conclusion. Bibliography.

Digitalization is the process of integration digital technologies to transform number of elements of business model, producing value-creating opportunities and new revenue. (EINHORN, 2003) Due to the trends that are creating the market, digital modification impacted on most of the industries including the restaurant industry. In restaurant industry specifically fast food restaurants are changing from traditional way of serving food quickly in simple environment to dining places with range of digital facilities. By embracing new digital services across the business, fast food restaurant came up with new features and improvements to achieve foreseeing goal.

McDonald’s has put significant attention on digital revolution from hiring the first ever Chief Digital Officer in the fast food industry to acquiring personalization tech startup Dynamic Yield company which using AI- powered technology. With the integration of new digital platforms and technological utilizations McDonald’s made a greater progress on keeping up with digital revolution.

The Industry 4.0 project was introduced by the German Government during the 2011 Hannover Fair. This project brought out significant change on production of products as manufacturing become digitalized resulting on more efficient and faster process. The first industrial revolution was mechanization through steam and water power, this was the foundation for the second industrial revolution of mass production assembly lines by using electrical energy. The third revolution made through the utilization of electronic and IT systems, leading to the automation in the production process. Lastly, in Industry 4.0 cyber and physical networks combined to reach the fully autonomous system. (I4.0 today)

1. Internet of Things-the collection of data from all sort of devices and sensors. (5 Key Industry 4.0 Technologies Changing Manufacturing, 2020)

2. Big Data and Analytics- put all collected data into a database and apply analytics to create actionable business intelligence. (Catlett, Cloud computing and big data, 2013)

3. Cloud computing-diverse services over the internet, such as storage, networking, software, analytics and intelligence. (Catlett, Cloud computing and big data, 2013)

McDonald’s is one of the major fast food companies that are operating by many types of business venture like franchise, affiliate or corporation itself since 1940. It has over 38,000 branches and serves over 69million customers on a daily basis across more than 100 countries in the world. (Reed, 2020) Through recurring alteration, technology research and reformation, McDonald’s has changed itself from a tiny restaurant to a fast food restaurant chain. Year by year, McDonald’s focuses on diverse requirements of the people by modifying the products and services with the help of digital platforms and technologies.

As it stated above, McDonalds serves a great number of people daily which accumulates a large amount of data which can turn into measurable metrics for analysis. McDonald’s has advanced into a more information-centric company that is intrinsically managed by data-based resolution. (Puno, 2019) By integrating figures across every McDonald’s branch and formatting data visualizations, the company can make more comparable outcomes that would support getting a more comprehensive image of their consumers. For instance, drive thru service developed thanks to big data and analytics. Knowing what times of day customers are more likely to get service by drive thru, what kind of people lining to order at drive thru and the ordering patterns will able them to discover applicable and actionable results, eventuating in time and money saved.