McDonald's Corporation, perhaps the premier hamburger retailer in the world for decades, now faces significant problems. Within the last 10 years, McDonald's share of fast-food sales in the United States has slipped almost two percentage points. The drop has come despite the company's increasing its number of restaurants by 50 percent, thereby leading the industry. How is McDonald's trying to regain its lost sales? The primary solution involves reengineering the company's system for making hamburgers. In the past, McDonald's used a standard method for making hamburgers. The customer could get a custom hamburger, but it would take much longer. In essence, it was a choice between a preferred hamburger and speed of service. The new food preparation method requires McDonald's to prepare order one at a time as opposed to its traditional method of preparing it in batches. Besides being more customers oriented, this "one order at a time" method should help McDonald's compete more effectively with Burger King and Wendy's, two of its primary competitors. The new system has many advantages. First of all, it is very quick and accurate since its operation is computerized. Indeed, the system had to be designed to be quick and because customers want food promptly and sandwiches are not made until customers actually order them. As another advantage, the new system will lower food costs. Company officials believe that the old system's batch-related cost of having to discard prepared food held too long in the warmer will be eliminated. Finally, since food is no longer held in a warmer, the quality should be raised even further. Michael Quinlan, CEO at McDonald's, is very excited about the new system being introduced in his restaurants. He believes the speedier system will enable restaurants to serve more people at peak hours and offer more and different products. Quinlan, however, is an astute manager, and he knows that many problems will arise before the system contributes all that it can to the success of the organization.