6 ms·

> If the nightly heat cycle fails to complete for one of a dozen reasons the machine locks out. Those unaware of the process usually end up calling for service

> If the nightly heat cycle fails to complete for one of a dozen reasons the machine locks out. Those unaware of the process usually end up calling for service even if it’s a operations error(not enough product to boil successfully) This example is covered in the video. ;) The thing is, at least according to the reporting, even these operations errors are not clearly defined by the messages given by the machine. So, according to franchisees they talked to, all roads lead to the service technician, even if the problem doesn’t need one. That obviously leads to more downtime. It’s part of the problem because Taylor is incentivized to keep people calling in technicians, which means they deliberately update the machines with error codes even more difficult to understand. (Examples covered in the video too) Additionally, the video covers that many other chains, such as Wendy’s, use machines from Taylor with no problems. Supposedly, this is something specifically wrong with the model given to McDonald’s, because franchises don’t have a choice to use other models. When the video came out, about 14% of machines in the US were “broken”, which is pretty terrible for an industry application regardless of the cause!

wronglebowski 6y ago
I always had access to a Taylor manual and a Taylor technician via phone at no cost. Even with machines that were far out of warranty. Troubleshooting was never an issue for me. I never worked anywhere else with a Taylor machine. Perhaps other companies have better deals or easier to use equipment. I would like to know if Wendy's and others machines operate using the same food safety standards.
- megameter 6y ago
  "Food safety standards" would not result in downtime rising from <1% to over 10%.
- sverhagen 6y ago
  > I always had access to a Taylor manual and a Taylor technician via phone at no cost. Was that technician for free? Or did your franchise owner pay for it, out of (your) sight? The claim isn't that they do a poor job with technicians, just that they are perversely incentivized to profit from it. The video also explains there was a (very limited) owner manual, while all the secrets were in the service manual. Which of those did you have access to? I find it potentially a bit of a low blow to question Wendy's and others' food safety standards. Did you see the video?
  - setr 6y ago
    Payment type would also matter. If it’s a flat monthly fee then they’re incentivized to avoid service calls. I imagine franchises and Taylor itself would also vastly prefer such a scheme, as it would reduce cost variation.
    - sverhagen 6y ago
      I understand that companies like Taylor benefit from income streams being predictable. But as per the video it seems that their revenue model was predicated on having as many incidents as possible, each billed separately.
      - carlmr 6y ago
        If you have many incidents, they become statistically predictable again.
  - wronglebowski 6y ago
    I had access to both. We did not pay for any of it. In fact the Taylor facility in our local market offered free “training” days once a year specifically for McDonald’s employees. McDonald’s is much more political than people think. The franchise I worked for was very well connected and well represented. It’s possible that this access was something they pushed for or is not well known.
- praptak 6y ago
  Was it at McDonald's? The article specifically says that it's McDonald's machines that require (edit:excessive) maintenance and not the ones used by other companies.
- numpad0 6y ago
  From this comment tree I wonder if the problem is some evil company being greedy, or is it a lack of incentives in McD and franchise owner to update SOP to properly train and assign a worker to properly maintain the machine to keep the machine running to offer ice creams consistently. Why do they keep an item on the menu if they are not being able to make it reliably?
  - wronglebowski 6y ago
    It's a minor but important part of the profitability picture. While this is much less true today, one of the core concepts was always that McDonald's could execute things at scale no one else could. Now there's a ton of competition and specialty shops, but in the past this wasn't always the case. A small town might only have one other location where you can get "fresh" ice cream. If you can execute on this machine properly and you have the market to support it they can be huge profit makers.
- syshum 6y ago
  >>>I always had access to a Taylor manual You expect people to RTFM.... come one this is 2021 no one reads manuals any more... //wish that as sarcasm but the number of times I have seen a solution to a problem that plagued people for weeks be found clearly laid out in the manual for a given product is far to high
ping_pong 6y ago
Are you mansplaining about how the ice cream machine works after watching a video, to someone who actually used and maintained the ice cream machine?
- zizee 6y ago
  Can we please keep gender warfare off HN? (or at least when it has nothing to do with the story/discussion)
  - C19is20 6y ago
    Isn't "mansplaining" nowadays so far gone that, as a word, it has become gender-neutral and is used instead of "condescending".
    - ranguna 6y ago
      I'd say: no.
    - bumblelad 6y ago
      No. It's literally got the word 'man' in it. Nothing gender neutral about that. Please stop and don't encourage this kind of behavior.
    - StavrosK 6y ago
      The sentence would have worked just as well with "being condescending" in place of "mansplaining". To me, mansplaining has clear gender overtones.
    - gruez 6y ago
      I literally never heard of it used in a women-explaining context.
      - arbitrage 6y ago
        I use "womansplaining" or "ladysplaining" when i'm talking with other women, sometimes.
raverbashing 6y ago
> It’s part of the problem because Taylor is incentivized to keep people calling in technicians, which means they deliberately update the machines with error codes even more difficult to understand. (Examples covered in the video too) I do believe this happens but I'm also "skeptical" of the ability of a high attrition place with underqualified workers working under pressure to get themselves up to date in maintenance practices and manuals. Edit: and yes, the franchisees are the ones who get the short stick. Franchises are thorny and usually not in the favour of the franchisee.
- matthewdgreen 6y ago
  It is very common for engineers to hypothesize (often with limited evidence) that the problem is “the users” rather than the technology and its support infrastructure. I think this can be true, but two points: 1. The high-attrition low-skill workforce at fast food restaurants is a fact of the industry. (I am not endorsing it either.) So if a solution is failing widely when faced with the reality of its users, then the system is flawed not the users. Of course, you might argue that it’s impossible to build a system that works with this type of users, which leads to: 2. The video argues that failure rates at competing fast food restaurants are vastly lower. While I can’t verify this myself, if we assume it’s true then it’s strong evidence that the problem here is unique to McDonalds and therefore doesn’t represent some systematic impossibility. I don’t care much about ice cream machines, but in the broader technological sense I dislike “users are the problem” arguments. The whole point of tech is to make users’ lives easier. When other people are doing that and you’re not, there is a problem.
  - wronglebowski 6y ago
    While I understand this viewpoint and I don't necessarily disagree with it, this one piece of equipment is unique and that's why I think it is so often "broken". No other piece of equipment has the mix of complexity and niche impact on the restaurant. Even the brand new at the time espresso machines are mostly self cleaning. There's no other object that requires this(minor IMO) skill level to operate. So it's just left undone. It's widely regarded that while it's a high profit machine most of the time you can run a highly successful business without it.
Spooky23 6y ago
The reporting is based on conversations with franchisees, who are a part of the equation here too. McDonalds franchisees are always in a tug of war with the company over various issues, especially loss leader products like ice cream and the dollar menu. Thus, it mysteriously “breaks”. In some markets, a cone is $0.29 — it’s a money loser that the franchisee doesn’t like and probably doesn’t drive traffic in many locations. I’d look at the human element before declaring a major manufacturer of a simple product incompetent. They wouldn’t be consistently failing for their biggest customer over many years.
- rdedev 6y ago
  This seems to be an issue with only McD. According to the video other vendors like Wendy's don't have this problem. Remember that McD the company has nothing to loose from failing ice cream machines. That loss is taken by the franchise owners
  - gruez 6y ago
    >According to the video other vendors like Wendy's don't have this problem. because their machines don't self-sanitize.
    - 60secs 6y ago
      The video covers this. All franchises for all companies typically do this overnight.
      - gruez 6y ago
        They all have to be cleaned nightly, but they're not all self-sanitizing. The woman at the wendy's drive-through said they "wash" the machines nightly, which suggests they take it a part and wash it rather than running a self-sanitizing cycle.
        jbm 6y ago
        Out of curiosity, is there a difference, work load aside, in the end result of the two processes?
saalweachter 6y ago
Anecdotally, my local McDonald's never has trouble with their milkshake machine-- it's my local Burger King that frequently does. So a franchisee-specific training problem would make a lot of sense.
- VLM 6y ago
  My sister worked there as a kid and labor on demand had certain chaotic results. To give an IT analogy if an IT department staffed based on corporate's seemingly random rolls of the dice it could be painful to make sure weekly backups get done weekly, for example. Especially if the only feedback was when the restore process occasionally broke down. Whereas if some dude is always at work every Friday morning at 8am he can get in the habit of being the guy who always runs the backups. Also imagine if the only way to run backups was to flip the power switch for a half hour and hope you know how to complete the backup in less than a half hour... nobody wants to be that guy who shut off the DB server even if maint is required...
  - ethbr0 6y ago
    On the other hand... if you're swapping people in and out of a roll, it forces you to have an SOP and training. If it's the same person for 5+ years, I can guarantee there's nothing accurate written down (even in regulated industries). Given the two problems, I've seen more dumpster fires as a result of the latter than the former.
sct202 6y ago
Wendy's has 2 soft serves (vanilla and chocolate). McDonalds has like 8 ice cream/shake drinks, so it shouldn't be a surprise that McDonalds would have a more expensive and complicated machine to get 4x as many varieties.

wronglebowski 6y ago

I always had access to a Taylor manual and a Taylor technician via phone at no cost. Even with machines that were far out of warranty. Troubleshooting was never an issue for me. I never worked anywhere else with a Taylor machine. Perhaps other companies have better deals or easier to use equipment. I would like to know if Wendy's and others machines operate using the same food safety standards.

megameter 6y ago
"Food safety standards" would not result in downtime rising from <1% to over 10%.
sverhagen 6y ago
> I always had access to a Taylor manual and a Taylor technician via phone at no cost. Was that technician for free? Or did your franchise owner pay for it, out of (your) sight? The claim isn't that they do a poor job with technicians, just that they are perversely incentivized to profit from it. The video also explains there was a (very limited) owner manual, while all the secrets were in the service manual. Which of those did you have access to? I find it potentially a bit of a low blow to question Wendy's and others' food safety standards. Did you see the video?
- setr 6y ago
  Payment type would also matter. If it’s a flat monthly fee then they’re incentivized to avoid service calls. I imagine franchises and Taylor itself would also vastly prefer such a scheme, as it would reduce cost variation.
  - sverhagen 6y ago
    I understand that companies like Taylor benefit from income streams being predictable. But as per the video it seems that their revenue model was predicated on having as many incidents as possible, each billed separately.
    - carlmr 6y ago
      If you have many incidents, they become statistically predictable again.
- wronglebowski 6y ago
  I had access to both. We did not pay for any of it. In fact the Taylor facility in our local market offered free “training” days once a year specifically for McDonald’s employees. McDonald’s is much more political than people think. The franchise I worked for was very well connected and well represented. It’s possible that this access was something they pushed for or is not well known.
praptak 6y ago
Was it at McDonald's? The article specifically says that it's McDonald's machines that require (edit:excessive) maintenance and not the ones used by other companies.
numpad0 6y ago
From this comment tree I wonder if the problem is some evil company being greedy, or is it a lack of incentives in McD and franchise owner to update SOP to properly train and assign a worker to properly maintain the machine to keep the machine running to offer ice creams consistently. Why do they keep an item on the menu if they are not being able to make it reliably?
- wronglebowski 6y ago
  It's a minor but important part of the profitability picture. While this is much less true today, one of the core concepts was always that McDonald's could execute things at scale no one else could. Now there's a ton of competition and specialty shops, but in the past this wasn't always the case. A small town might only have one other location where you can get "fresh" ice cream. If you can execute on this machine properly and you have the market to support it they can be huge profit makers.
syshum 6y ago
>>>I always had access to a Taylor manual You expect people to RTFM.... come one this is 2021 no one reads manuals any more... //wish that as sarcasm but the number of times I have seen a solution to a problem that plagued people for weeks be found clearly laid out in the manual for a given product is far to high

ping_pong 6y ago

Are you mansplaining about how the ice cream machine works after watching a video, to someone who actually used and maintained the ice cream machine?

zizee 6y ago
Can we please keep gender warfare off HN? (or at least when it has nothing to do with the story/discussion)
- C19is20 6y ago
  Isn't "mansplaining" nowadays so far gone that, as a word, it has become gender-neutral and is used instead of "condescending".
  - ranguna 6y ago
    I'd say: no.
  - bumblelad 6y ago
    No. It's literally got the word 'man' in it. Nothing gender neutral about that. Please stop and don't encourage this kind of behavior.
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    The sentence would have worked just as well with "being condescending" in place of "mansplaining". To me, mansplaining has clear gender overtones.
  - gruez 6y ago
    I literally never heard of it used in a women-explaining context.
    - arbitrage 6y ago
      I use "womansplaining" or "ladysplaining" when i'm talking with other women, sometimes.

raverbashing 6y ago

> It’s part of the problem because Taylor is incentivized to keep people calling in technicians, which means they deliberately update the machines with error codes even more difficult to understand. (Examples covered in the video too) I do believe this happens but I'm also "skeptical" of the ability of a high attrition place with underqualified workers working under pressure to get themselves up to date in maintenance practices and manuals. Edit: and yes, the franchisees are the ones who get the short stick. Franchises are thorny and usually not in the favour of the franchisee.

matthewdgreen 6y ago
It is very common for engineers to hypothesize (often with limited evidence) that the problem is “the users” rather than the technology and its support infrastructure. I think this can be true, but two points: 1. The high-attrition low-skill workforce at fast food restaurants is a fact of the industry. (I am not endorsing it either.) So if a solution is failing widely when faced with the reality of its users, then the system is flawed not the users. Of course, you might argue that it’s impossible to build a system that works with this type of users, which leads to: 2. The video argues that failure rates at competing fast food restaurants are vastly lower. While I can’t verify this myself, if we assume it’s true then it’s strong evidence that the problem here is unique to McDonalds and therefore doesn’t represent some systematic impossibility. I don’t care much about ice cream machines, but in the broader technological sense I dislike “users are the problem” arguments. The whole point of tech is to make users’ lives easier. When other people are doing that and you’re not, there is a problem.
- wronglebowski 6y ago
  While I understand this viewpoint and I don't necessarily disagree with it, this one piece of equipment is unique and that's why I think it is so often "broken". No other piece of equipment has the mix of complexity and niche impact on the restaurant. Even the brand new at the time espresso machines are mostly self cleaning. There's no other object that requires this(minor IMO) skill level to operate. So it's just left undone. It's widely regarded that while it's a high profit machine most of the time you can run a highly successful business without it.

Spooky23 6y ago

The reporting is based on conversations with franchisees, who are a part of the equation here too. McDonalds franchisees are always in a tug of war with the company over various issues, especially loss leader products like ice cream and the dollar menu. Thus, it mysteriously “breaks”. In some markets, a cone is $0.29 — it’s a money loser that the franchisee doesn’t like and probably doesn’t drive traffic in many locations. I’d look at the human element before declaring a major manufacturer of a simple product incompetent. They wouldn’t be consistently failing for their biggest customer over many years.

rdedev 6y ago
This seems to be an issue with only McD. According to the video other vendors like Wendy's don't have this problem. Remember that McD the company has nothing to loose from failing ice cream machines. That loss is taken by the franchise owners
- gruez 6y ago
  >According to the video other vendors like Wendy's don't have this problem. because their machines don't self-sanitize.
  - 60secs 6y ago
    The video covers this. All franchises for all companies typically do this overnight.
    - gruez 6y ago
      They all have to be cleaned nightly, but they're not all self-sanitizing. The woman at the wendy's drive-through said they "wash" the machines nightly, which suggests they take it a part and wash it rather than running a self-sanitizing cycle.
      - jbm 6y ago
        Out of curiosity, is there a difference, work load aside, in the end result of the two processes?

saalweachter 6y ago

Anecdotally, my local McDonald's never has trouble with their milkshake machine-- it's my local Burger King that frequently does. So a franchisee-specific training problem would make a lot of sense.

VLM 6y ago
My sister worked there as a kid and labor on demand had certain chaotic results. To give an IT analogy if an IT department staffed based on corporate's seemingly random rolls of the dice it could be painful to make sure weekly backups get done weekly, for example. Especially if the only feedback was when the restore process occasionally broke down. Whereas if some dude is always at work every Friday morning at 8am he can get in the habit of being the guy who always runs the backups. Also imagine if the only way to run backups was to flip the power switch for a half hour and hope you know how to complete the backup in less than a half hour... nobody wants to be that guy who shut off the DB server even if maint is required...
- ethbr0 6y ago
  On the other hand... if you're swapping people in and out of a roll, it forces you to have an SOP and training. If it's the same person for 5+ years, I can guarantee there's nothing accurate written down (even in regulated industries). Given the two problems, I've seen more dumpster fires as a result of the latter than the former.

sct202 6y ago

Wendy's has 2 soft serves (vanilla and chocolate). McDonalds has like 8 ice cream/shake drinks, so it shouldn't be a surprise that McDonalds would have a more expensive and complicated machine to get 4x as many varieties.