Managing staff the McDonalds way

McDonalds is a huge company in most cities worldwide and one of their many strengths is that wherever you are you know what to expect. You can be in Auckland or Cardiff and the food is going to be exactly the same. How do they manage such consistency? Manuals!
They have a proper proceedure for every operation to ensure consistency for the customer. I daresay someone could come along with another experience from McDonalds but those are rare. Also they manage this with young inexperienced and often temporary staff - an extraordinary achievement.
What can small businesses even farming businesses learn from this? There are so many proceedures that can be written down and standardised, yes even on a farm. The advantage of this is that in times of crisis anyone could come along and run that business. Also it helps so much when you are changing members of staff - they can settle in so much more quickly.
I was fortunate to see an example of this on a visit to New Zealand in 1999. A group of us were talking to a farmer and a car drew up with a relief milker who had never been to the farm before. Our host excused himself and spoke to the milker for less than a minute. He pointed out where the cows and milking parlour were and that was it! How could he do that? He had a manual in the dairy that covered the whole operation, from getting the cows in, milking proceedure and washing up afterwards.
So it can be done. Are there areas of your business you could put in a manual? That farmer said " you have to make it simple so that a monkey could do it because one day one may have to!"