Touch-Screen Terminals At McDonald's In Europe

A few days ago I posted a link here to an article from BusinessWeek detailing how fast food chains had striven for years to increase the efficiency of their business processes and had succeeded to the point where there was not  much, if any, further streamlining possible.  Today McDonald's announced that in Europe it will soon begin replacing human cashiers at its restaurants with touch-screen terminals (taking only credit cards) to be operated by the customers themselves. The switch will apparently shave a few seconds off the transaction time of each order, and, like the use of a store loyalty card, will also give McDonald's more data about its customers' ordering habits and demographics. You can read more about it HERE.