End-to-End Supply Chain Execution Can Be a Reality vs a Goal
AI-powered orchestration for the McDonald’s supply chain
McDonald’s is building case-level visibility across the supply chain. You’ll know where everything is. FourKites turns that data into automated action — coordinating suppliers, distributors, and restaurants so your 550-person supply chain team can focus on strategy instead of phone s.
Notice: This custom resource center was created exclusively for McDonald’s and is not shared with other organizations. All content is intended solely for McDonald’s internal review. All company names, logos, and trademarks are used solely for identification purposes and do not imply endorsement, partnership, or affiliation.
Closing the Coordination Gap
It’s 1:45 at a McDonald’s restaurant. A truck should arrive at 2:00. The manager checks the system — nothing new. They call the distribution center. The DC is looking into it. The lunch rush just ended with a busload of customers, and they’re now short on fries. This scene plays out across thousands of restaurants every day, generating thousands of phone calls a year to distributors about order status alone.
EDSC and McTrack are building the foundation. That infrastructure tells you where inventory is at every handoff. But it doesn’t answer what franchisees actually need to know: when will my order arrive, and what happens if it doesn’t? This is especially critical when promotions drive demand above forecast; some restaurants run dry while other DCs have excess. The missing piece isn’t visibility. It is orchestration.
Transform Your Digital Investment with AI Agents
You’ve invested years and significant resources building EDSC. FourKites doesn’t replace any of it. We connect to what’s already there — your infrastructure keeps working. Your McTrack platform keeps running. Our AI agents add the coordination layer that turns tracking data into proactive action across your entire supplier ecosystem, with 20 of your key suppliers already connected to our network.
- Your infrastructure, amplified: FourKites layers on top of EDSC and McTrack, seamlessly extending your investment into AI-powered orchestration without disrupting existing systems or workflows
- Your suppliers already use FourKites: Coca-Cola, Armada, Martin Brower, Tyson, Cargill, Nestlé, ConAgra, and Schreiber are among 20+ McDonald’s suppliers already using FourKites
- Made to Order for McDonald’s: tens of millions of daily supply chain signals tracked across 200+ countries and territories, with pre-built integrations for Oracle, Manhattan, SAP, and Jaggaer — the systems already running your supply chain
Order Up: AI Agents That Handle the Work Your Team Shouldn’t Have To
Customer Service
AI Agent Cassie Answers Before Franchisees Call
Challenge: Franchisees and restaurant operators distribution centers hundreds of thousands of times per year with the same basic question: where’s my order? Each pulls DC staff away from higher-value work, and franchisees and managers spend time on the phone instead of serving customers.
Solution: AI Agent Cassie answers order status questions in seconds, directly to franchisees and managers. No hold times. No phone trees. When a delivery is delayed, Cassie proactively pushes updates before anyone has to ask. Your managers open a tablet or phone and see exactly when deliveries arrive.
Impact:
- Automate the bulk of the “where’s my order” s
- Response in seconds vs. current 90-minute SLA windows
- Free restaurant managers to focus on customers and crew, not tracking orders
In-Transit Tracking
AI Agent Tracy Tracks Trucks So Your Team Doesn’t Have To
Challenge: When a truck is en route to a distribution center or restaurant, the only way to know if it’s running late is to the carrier or check a portal. Your teams spend hours on manual status checks that could be automated.
Solution: AI Agent Tracy follows trucks in motion, combining your location pings with live traffic, weather, and carrier performance history to predict when trucks actually arrive. Late shipment? Tracy alerts everyone who needs to know automatiy in seconds while she investigates the exception with the carrier directly.
Impact:
- Predictive ETAs powered by 3.2M+ daily shipments across the FourKites network
- Automated exception alerts with no manual check s or portal logins
- 24/7 monitoring with no added headcount
Supplier Coordination
AI Agent Sam Handles Suppliers Before They Ship
Challenge: Your supply chain team manages hundreds of suppliers with varying levels of digital maturity, requiring manual outreach to confirm order or shipment status, resolve discrepancies, and coordinate timing before product even leaves the dock.
Solution: AI Agent Sam watches orders and shipments before they leave suppliers. Sam ingests unstructured supplier data, like BOLs and receipts, to create shipment records and link them to orders without human intervention. Your team no longer has to manually update order quantities based on shipping data or guess ETAs.
Impact:
- Automate supplier communication across all suppliers regardless of their ERP systems
- Integrate new suppliers digitally in days
- Eliminate manual data entry and supplier portal dependencies
Promotion Resilience
AI Rebalances Inventory When Demand Spikes
Challenge: When promotions drive demand far above forecast, restaurants have the potential to experience stockouts while other parts of the network may hold excess inventory. While EDSC provides visibility across key inventory positions, there is no mechanism for dynamic rebalancing or for acting on the full network picture in real time. As a result, responding to these situations requires manual analysis and coordination to determine the best actions to protect restaurant supply.
Solution: FourKites builds on the visibility already provided by EDSC, using AI-powered agents to evaluate inventory positions across the supply network and orchestrate the most effective response during demand spikes. By continuously monitoring EDSC data, AI can analyze available supply across distribution centers, in-transit shipments, and supplier on-hand inventory to generate calculated rebalancing recommendations before stockouts occur. These recommendations can include actions such as DC-to-DC transfers, redirecting in-transit inventory, prioritizing deliveries to constrained distribution centers, or leveraging available supplier inventory—ensuring the best response is taken based on the full network picture.
Impact:
- Network-wide visibility across DCs and key supply chain inventory positions during demand spikes
- AI-driven recommendations to proactively rebalance supply before restaurants are at risk of stockouts
- Faster, data-driven decisions that help protect revenue and customer experience during peak promotional periods
Dock Scheduling
AI Agent Alan Adjusts Dock Schedules Automatiy
Challenge: When arrival times shift, someone has to manually update the dock schedule at each distribution center. Otherwise, trucks wait because schedules weren’t updated, crews stand idle, and perishable products sit longer than they should.
Solution: AI Agent Alan manages dock schedules dynamiy – even at vendor locations when you need it. When Tracy recalculates an arrival time, Alan automatiy adjusts the schedule at the receiving facility. No need for manual updates, and no trucks waiting because someone forgot to make a change.
Impact:
- Dynamic dock scheduling that responds in real time to ETA changes
- Reduce driver wait times at distribution centers
- Optimize warehouse crew utilization during peak and off-peak windows
Pull Up to the Window. Your AI Agents Are Ready.
Proof Points From Inside Your Supply Chain: Results Your Suppliers Have Achieved
From 90 Minutes to Seconds
Coca-Cola faced overwhelming volumes of manual “where’s my truck” inquiries with a 90-minute SLA for customer responses. After implementing FourKites AI Agent Tracy, response times dropped to seconds, hundreds of associate hours were returned to higher-value work, and the company gained 24/7 customer service without adding headcount. Coca-Cola won FourKites’ Supply Chain Visionary award for the transformation.
Faster Deliveries, Fewer Delays
Martin Brower Canada, McDonald’s primary distributor, used FourKites Instant Messenger and notifications to streamline communication with carrier partners. The result: 19% reduction in driver wait times and 4% improvement in on-time delivery performance within one year.
Full Platform Pilot in Progress
Armada, another key McDonald’s distributor, is currently piloting the full FourKites Intelligent Control Tower with AI agents — including PRO and TMS integration and Digital Workforce capabilities. PepsiCo, Nestlé, and ConAgra are also piloting the ICT solution within the McDonald’s supplier network.
What Your Suppliers Are Saying About FourKites
Coca-Cola
“FourKites AI Agent Tracy positions us ahead of the curve as we prepare for a future where customers expect increased and differentiated service capabilities."
Martin Brower
“Over the past year, Martin Brower Canada has enhanced efficiency by reducing driver wait times by 19% and improving on-time delivery performance by 4%, achieved through the effective use of FourKites Instant Messenger and notifications. These tools streamline communication with our carrier partners to ensure timely and reliable product delivery.”
ConAgra
“We've really embarked on a journey to try to manage the end-to-end supply chain process through visibility. And not only just visibility, but actually taking the data insights and taking action from it. A lot of people have had information or data on certain nodes, but the ability to connect it across the ecosystem is really where we're going. So we're leveraging FourKites as a key element of that.”
Schreiber Foods
“Visibility gives us precision in decision making and proactive tracking. We're getting ahead of outages, going upstream and figuring out what we can impact. We know disruptions are going to happen, and they're happening at an unprecedented rate for everyone. So it's not a question of if we need to pivot, but how we will pivot and how quickly.”
Tyson Foods
“Through FourKites, we improved tracking from 73% to over 97% and increased visibility by 7% through systematic root cause analysis. Working collaboratively with carrier compliance and EDI teams, we identified and fixed integration issues, including carriers not sending EDI check s.”
The Grocery Outlet
“My mind is blown… At Target, we had a whole team to answer these questions, and that would take a day or two… after deploying FourKites, I got all of my questions answered in minutes. This has changed how I think about using AI… Wow.”
Trusted by the Suppliers That Power the McDonald’s Ecosystem
