Experiencing how tech can transform operations at McKinsey’s newest Innovation and Learning Center

September 15, 2025 When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. When you want to optimize your lemonade operations, head to McKinsey's newest Innovation and Learning Center in Munich-where a fully functional lemonade production line brings innovation and experiential learning to life. As the latest addition to McKinsey's global network of 11 centers, the Munich hub helps organizations unlock new levels of operational performance.

A global hub for innovation

McKinsey's Innovation and Learning Centers provide interactive environments where companies can explore cutting-edge technologies and operational strategies. To become a top-performing organization, it's critical to not only adopt new technologies and strategies but also to build capabilities and manage change effectively-both of which are integral to the Innovation and Learning Center experience. Across the Americas, Asia, and Europe, these hubs welcome more than 500 organizations and 13,000 participants annually, empowering leaders and teams to drive measurable improvements.

Munich's location-at the heart of a vibrant operations community-makes it an ideal setting for organizations to experience how digital tools such as virtual assistants, supply chain control towers, and AI-powered solutions can streamline processes and boost the bottom line.

Clients can also test solutions from over 150 technology solution providers, giving participants the opportunity to apply operational strategy and change management before embedding them into their own company. The center is equally open to McKinsey colleagues, who use the space to create new content, test fresh digital use cases, and bring those learnings back to clients.

"Leading a global transformation initiative at scale, you need more than just technical knowledge," says Alexander Götz-Kayser, director of digital operations and advanced manufacturing at Tenneco. "You actually need to be a coach. You need to motivate, and the experience here in the Innovation and Learning Center really helped me to gain the credibility to do so."

Unboxing innovation: The Model Factory in a Box

At the center of the Munich center is a permanently installed Model Factory in a Box-McKinsey's portable lemonade production line. In interactive workshops, participants take over the "factory floor," tackling challenges in lean operations, digital transformation, change management, and sustainability.

"It's a realistic operation, so it feels very hands-on," says Jonathan Chapman, asset leader at McKinsey. "Participants start with no plan, no KPIs, broken processes-and then we introduce tools and techniques to turn it around. The change in just a few hours is remarkable."

Model Factory in a Box has been used to upskill over 7,000 participants from around the world in industries spanning consumer goods companies to agriculture to energy. This versatile tool can be applied to train staff at all levels, from CEOs to frontline teams, through one- to five-day workshops tailored to their operational needs.

Learning by doing-and remembering

The Model Factory in a Box experience is as engaging as it is impactful. "I ran a training in Nigeria where participants were competing so hard to beat the previous day's production that extra people tried to join in," Jonathan recalls. "In Scotland, four years after a workshop, people still remembered me as 'the lemonade guy.'"

The impact extends far beyond the training room. One chemicals client trained 80 employees over four days, then scaled the program globally to 1,620 colleagues-driving a 40 percent productivity increase in packaging operations.

Evolving the future

Model Factory in a Box is continually updated to reflect the latest in digital operations. Recent innovations include a generative AI maintenance advisor that diagnoses equipment issues in real time, with versions available with open source code, Lilli, or SAP software. The team is now exploring how agentic AI can further optimize processes.

"The aha moment for me was really an opportunity for the skill set of the future workforce," says Alexander. "We had the chance to experience programming for collaborative robots, and it was really easy to use. [Society] has already now a lack of experts in robot programming, and this experience showed me we can overcome this using modern technologies."

This is exactly what Model Factory in a Box and the Innovation and Learning Centers aim to do. As Jonathan says, "We want to show the art of the possible in digital. The centers are just another way McKinsey helps clients use technology to transform their organizations and industries."