The specific manifestation of the problem may not be novel, but the underlying problem persists. It's the people, process, technology argument. McDonald's is heavy on process and technology but have unskilled labor - as far as restaurant work is concerned.<p>An article I read in the early 2K's summed up several software engineering studies about the importance of people, process, and technology to software projects. The conclusion, overwhelmingly, was that successful projects had a cohesive team of very good developers. In less successful and completely failed projects, developers were not carefully chosen and time was not allocated to develop a sense of team. Software methodology and technology (equipment, tools, etc.) varied widely and was not deemed as critical to success.<p>The conclusion was that people were 60% of the success of a project while process and technology were 20% each.<p>I'll try to find a link to the article. It would have been around 2001 in either IEEE's Computer, CACM, Queue, or Dr. Dobb's.