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This situation just seems so absurd from the McDonald's side of things. Why were they ever tolerating such nonsense from their hardware vendors in the first pl

This situation just seems so absurd from the McDonald's side of things. Why were they ever tolerating such nonsense from their hardware vendors in the first place. It fundamentally harms their brand.

joezydeco 4y ago
The self-cleaning ice cream machine was requested by McD to solve the problem of contamination in their ice cream machines. The old way was to drain/disassemble the machine every night, disinfect the parts AND the chambers, and then reassemble. It was error-prone, could still allow for contamination, and required a lot of skill and time. Lots of time. The intent was to make a machine that could self-pasteurize the insides under computer control and eliminate a lot of the manual labor. It's a very intricate system and the lockouts were meant to keep a small problem from turning into a food poisioning incident. But it's a tricky line to walk, as everyone has found out. On a high level, McD doesn't engineer their equipment. It's all subcontracted out to vendors and with a good amount of redundancy (every new system has two different companies providing equipment). And it usually works. Usually.
- musicale 4y ago
  > The self-cleaning ice cream machine was requested by McD to solve the problem of contamination in their ice cream machines Doesn't Starbucks have a self-cleaning coffee machine (Clover machine) that is fairly reliable? (Also presumably needs to flush out residue between cups, etc..) Though I imagine coffee/hot water are better at self-disinfecting. There are also all of those automated/unattended frozen yogurt stands, which seem fairly reliable, though I don't know how or how often (if ever?) the machines are cleaned/disinfected. In any case, it seems like there is an opportunity here for technological improvement.
  - joezydeco 4y ago
    The McD machine cleans itself by heating everything (machinery and dairy mixture) internally above the pasteurization temperature and then quickly cooling it back down. Kind of a different animal than flushing coffee grounds away with hot water. I did a proposal for some engineering on one of those automated froyo machines. Most are just a dirt-standard freezer with a robot cup handling & topping dispenser attachment. There was no requirement for self-cleaning. And, judging by the finished ones I've seen in public, there's no way I would ever eat out of one of these. I would be surprised if they're cleaned up more than once a week and everything in that chamber is at ambient temps.
- Twirrim 4y ago
  > And it usually works. Usually. What seems daft here is this is notoriously bad. McD is just taking negative press after negative press from it. It even crops up on TV news and other sites, such that people who might not be even interested in having a McFlurry are aware of how badly this is going.

This situation just seems so absurd from the McDonald's side of things. Why were they ever tolerating such nonsense from their hardware vendors in the first place. It fundamentally harms their brand.

joezydeco 4y ago

The self-cleaning ice cream machine was requested by McD to solve the problem of contamination in their ice cream machines. The old way was to drain/disassemble the machine every night, disinfect the parts AND the chambers, and then reassemble. It was error-prone, could still allow for contamination, and required a lot of skill and time. Lots of time. The intent was to make a machine that could self-pasteurize the insides under computer control and eliminate a lot of the manual labor. It's a very intricate system and the lockouts were meant to keep a small problem from turning into a food poisioning incident. But it's a tricky line to walk, as everyone has found out. On a high level, McD doesn't engineer their equipment. It's all subcontracted out to vendors and with a good amount of redundancy (every new system has two different companies providing equipment). And it usually works. Usually.

musicale 4y ago
> The self-cleaning ice cream machine was requested by McD to solve the problem of contamination in their ice cream machines Doesn't Starbucks have a self-cleaning coffee machine (Clover machine) that is fairly reliable? (Also presumably needs to flush out residue between cups, etc..) Though I imagine coffee/hot water are better at self-disinfecting. There are also all of those automated/unattended frozen yogurt stands, which seem fairly reliable, though I don't know how or how often (if ever?) the machines are cleaned/disinfected. In any case, it seems like there is an opportunity here for technological improvement.
- joezydeco 4y ago
  The McD machine cleans itself by heating everything (machinery and dairy mixture) internally above the pasteurization temperature and then quickly cooling it back down. Kind of a different animal than flushing coffee grounds away with hot water. I did a proposal for some engineering on one of those automated froyo machines. Most are just a dirt-standard freezer with a robot cup handling & topping dispenser attachment. There was no requirement for self-cleaning. And, judging by the finished ones I've seen in public, there's no way I would ever eat out of one of these. I would be surprised if they're cleaned up more than once a week and everything in that chamber is at ambient temps.
Twirrim 4y ago
> And it usually works. Usually. What seems daft here is this is notoriously bad. McD is just taking negative press after negative press from it. It even crops up on TV news and other sites, such that people who might not be even interested in having a McFlurry are aware of how badly this is going.