From “Innovation and Entrepreneurship” by Peter F. Drucker
To take a specific example, hamburger stands have been around in the United States since the nineteenth century; after World War II they sprang up on big-city street corners. But in the McDonalds hamburger chain – one of the success stories of the last twenty-five years – management was being applied to what had always been a hit-or-miss, mom-and-pop operation. McDonald’s first designed the end product; then it redesigned the entire process of making it; then it redesigned or in many cases invented the tools so that every piece of meat, every slice of onion, every bun, every piece of fried potato would be identical; turned out in a precisely timed and fully automated process. Finally, McDonald’s studied what “value” meant to the customer, defined it as quality and predictability of product, speed of service, absolute cleanliness, and friendliness, then set standards for all of these, trained for them, and geared compensation to them.