Modernizing Global Inventory Tracking

Enabled real-time visibility into global supply chain operations

 

MAKING A REAL-TIME DIFFERENCE

McDonald's turned to HAVI to help them meet the challenge of a complete digital supply chain transformation.

As Director of User Experience at HAVI, I led experience strategy and product design for McDonald's Efficient Digital Supply Chain (EDSC) transformation, a multi-year, global initiative spanning software, hardware, and AI-enabled systems.

The program evolved from McDonald's first mobile supply chain applications into a fully integrated platform that modernized inventory tracking, logistics, packaging, and promotional operations across 37,000+ locations worldwide.

This initiative required aligning product, design, engineering, data science, and global operations teams around a shared vision, transforming fragmented, manual workflows into a scalable, real-time decision platform. The work balanced long-term platform strategy with iterative delivery, enabling continuous value realization while building toward global rollout.

Shifted from static reporting to actionable, exception-based decision support

Would you like AI with that?

McDonald's Efficient Digital Supply Chain (EDSC) project implemented a complete supply chain transformation made possible by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), that will scale globally.

My first responsibility was to understand how supply chain decisions were actually being made across the system — who needed visibility, where handoffs broke down, what exceptions required action, and where existing tools forced teams into manual workarounds. That research shaped the platform strategy before the experience direction was finalized.

The product solutions developed were both software applications and physical components that provide accurate inventory levels throughout the supply chain in real-time — creating savings, value, and supply chain optimization.

The new solutions help McDonald's create a more integrated, optimized and efficient supply chain that is agile enough to respond to changing business conditions, keep its customers' trust, and protect its reputation.

The platform product design provides scalable, artificial intelligence-enabled software solutions to optimize the global supply chain for 37,000 McDonald's locations worldwide.

THE CHALLENGE

A MORE COST-EFFECTIVE, DEPENDABLE AND SUSTAINABLE SUPPLY CHAIN

McDonald's global supply chain relied heavily on fragmented, Excel-based workflows that were difficult to scale, prone to inefficiencies, and lacked real-time visibility.

Even incremental change introduced risk across a highly optimized system operating at massive scale. The challenge was not only to modernize technology, but to redesign workflows, align global stakeholders, and ensure adoption across a complex ecosystem of suppliers, distribution centers, and restaurant operators.

From a research standpoint, the challenge was understanding how different user groups interpreted the same supply chain data, how they prioritized risk, and what information they needed when a decision had to be made quickly.

For decades, McDonald's has used Excel-based spreadsheets to manage logistics manually. Business managers urgently needed an easy-to-use solution to integrate, automate and optimize them, which will lead their operations into the future and scale globally to all 37,000 locations.

Every stakeholder in the carefully calibrated supply chain system supplying 37,000 global stores needed to be able to easily implement and utilize the new solutions to make the transformation work, so product design and UX was critical to the success of this project.

KEY RESEARCH IMPACT

  • Conducted operational research with global supply chain stakeholders to understand how teams monitored inventory, identified exceptions, escalated risk, and coordinated response across distributed regions.
  • Mapped decision points, handoffs, visibility gaps, and manual workarounds across suppliers, distribution centers, restaurant operators, and enterprise teams.
  • Used research findings to shift the product direction from static reporting toward real-time alerts, analytics, and exception-based decision support.
  • Translated user needs into workflow models, dashboard priorities, and interaction patterns that helped teams monitor risk, prioritize exceptions, and coordinate action.
  • Research-informed product decisions helped establish a scalable AI/ML analytics platform for real-time operational intelligence across McDonald's international supply chain operations.

RESEARCH-INFORMED PRODUCT DECISIONS

  • Prioritized real-time visibility and exception-based alerting over static reporting to enable faster operational decision-making across global supply chain workflows.
  • Designed the platform to support both in-store teams and enterprise stakeholders, balancing local usability with global system consistency.
  • Focused on scalable data and interaction patterns to accommodate international supply chain complexity across more than 100 countries.
  • Integrated analytics, alerts, and workflow management into a unified experience to reduce fragmentation and improve operational efficiency.

MY ROLE & LEADERSHIP

MAKE ALREADY EFFICIENT LOGISTICS MORE COST-EFFECTIVE & DEPENDABLE

I led product and experience strategy for the EDSC program, defining the vision, operating model, and roadmap for a global supply chain platform.

My role combined hands-on research leadership, product strategy, design direction, stakeholder alignment, and cross-functional delivery across a highly complex operational ecosystem.

I embedded research and design practices into product and engineering workflows, helping teams use stakeholder insight, operational context, and usability feedback to make better decisions before platform direction and delivery plans were finalized.

Insights Led to Supply Chain Transformation

I began by meeting with stakeholders across the supply chain to understand how inventory decisions were made in practice, where visibility broke down, and what teams needed to know when exceptions occurred. The research focused on user context, decision timing, handoffs, manual workarounds, and the operational consequences of inaccurate or delayed information.

I synthesized those findings into user needs, workflow requirements, journey maps, and decision points that could be used by product, engineering, data science, IT, and operations teams. That helped the broader team align around what the platform needed to support, not just what the technology could make possible.

My research, prototyping, and validation work included:

  • Stakeholder interviews and operational workflow analysis
  • Journey mapping across suppliers, distribution centers, restaurant operators, and enterprise teams
  • Identification of visibility gaps, manual workarounds, exception-management needs, and decision points
  • Prototype development to test dashboard concepts, alerting models, and workflow priorities
  • Iteration based on stakeholder feedback and usability input
  • Research-informed dashboard design for AI-driven operational intelligence
  • Hardware placement and installation workflow considerations across suppliers, distribution centers, and restaurant locations
  • Close collaboration with engineering and data science teams to translate research into scalable platform capabilities

Positive Results Led to a Global Rollout

The initial pilot program exceeded its goals and received extremely positive feedback from McDonald's corporate officers.

I continued to work closely with stakeholders throughout the project at all levels to ensure that the roadmap stayed on track and on budget. I directly managed the product design as the EDSC program moved toward its successful global rollout in all 37,000 global locations.

My significant contributions included:

  • Defined and led platform experience strategy across AI-enabled supply chain systems, integrating software, hardware, and data pipelines into a unified ecosystem
  • Established end-to-end product design and delivery frameworks, aligning product, design, and engineering teams around shared goals and execution models
  • Facilitated stakeholder alignment across global business, operations, and technical teams through workshops, journey mapping, and strategic planning sessions
  • Translated complex operational challenges into scalable product solutions, balancing user needs, technical feasibility, and business impact
  • Guided distributed teams through concept development, prototyping, and delivery, ensuring consistency, quality, and usability at enterprise scale
  • Advocated for user-centered decision-making at the executive level, influencing product direction and prioritization
  • Drove simplification of complex workflows by using research insights to clarify user needs, decision points, and interaction patterns across diverse operational contexts

STRATEGY & INSIGHTS

FARM-TO-FORK KNOWLEDGE: EVERYONE NEEDS TO KNOW WHERE EVERY INVENTORY PRODUCT IS AT ALL TIMES

The EDSC platform was designed to provide real-time, end-to-end visibility across the entire supply chain — from suppliers to distribution centers to individual restaurant locations.

The strategic objective was to shift McDonald's from reactive, manual logistics management to a predictive, data-driven operating model powered by AI and machine learning.

This required integrating behavioral insights, operational data, and predictive analytics into a cohesive experience that enabled faster, more informed decision-making at every level of the organization.

Additional goals of the project are cost savings and increased sustainability efforts by using predictive analytics and AI to automate the replenishment process to avoid under- and overordering.

Since the new solutions allow for an end-to-end audit trail for every case of product, it makes targeted product recalls possible — knowledge of exactly what cases are affected without the waste of recalling every single case nationwide.

OPERATING MODEL

OPERATING MODEL & EXECUTION

Delivery followed an integrated cross-functional model aligning product, design, engineering, data science, and operations teams.

Research, strategy, and execution were tightly connected through continuous feedback loops, enabling rapid iteration while maintaining alignment with long-term platform goals.

RESULTS

END-TO-END AUDIT TRAIL SAVES TIME & RESOURCES

The EDSC transformation delivered a scalable, AI-enabled platform combining hardware, software, and data infrastructure to provide real-time inventory visibility across the global supply chain.

RFID-enabled tracking, integrated data pipelines, and role-specific dashboards helped stakeholders monitor inventory, identify risk, predict demand, and take action with greater confidence.

Each box of product is identified at critical tracking points. Research helped define what each user group needed to see first, which exceptions required attention, and how alerts should support action instead of simply adding more data. The resulting dashboards translated real-time inventory signals into role-specific views, priority indicators, and clear next steps.

A mobile app was developed and added to handheld scanners to audit inventory and validate the system. New software applications, using AI and ML, make predictions about inventory levels throughout the supply chain. Backend data pipelines have been created to securely handle all incoming and outgoing data.

Integrating software with process, while leveraging real-time data, helped McDonald's shift its focus from tactical day-to-day logistics management details to insights and trends. This information now shapes strategic decisions that drive the supply chain.

The new platform also provides an end-to-end audit trail for every case of product: farm-to-fork knowledge and an important tool for product recalls — stakeholders know exactly what cases are affected and don't need to recall every single case nationwide.

BUSINESS RESULTS

Research clarified the decisions, handoffs, and exceptions users needed to manage, helping the platform support immediate operational action while giving enterprise teams visibility across the global supply chain.

  • Enabled real-time visibility across a global supply chain network spanning 37,000+ locations
  • Reduced operational inefficiencies through automated shipment optimization and predictive inventory management
  • Lowered logistics and freight costs through improved planning and coordination
  • Strengthened brand reliability by ensuring consistent product availability across markets
  • Improved decision-making through actionable, real-time data and simplified dashboards