{"id":26240,"date":"2017-11-15T22:03:41","date_gmt":"2017-11-16T03:03:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digital.hbs.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/ciao-metal-molly-ill-have-pizza-al-taglio-per-favore\/"},"modified":"2017-11-15T22:03:41","modified_gmt":"2017-11-16T03:03:41","slug":"ciao-metal-molly-ill-have-pizza-al-taglio-per-favore","status":"publish","type":"hck-submission","link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/ciao-metal-molly-ill-have-pizza-al-taglio-per-favore\/","title":{"rendered":"Ciao Metal Molly, I\u2019ll Have Pizza al Taglio, Per Favore"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Italy is the home of pizza, but is a robot-made pizza less \u201cauthentically Italian?\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 When many consumers want fresh, minimally processed foods, how can a food company successfully use digitalization for supply chain productivity?\u00a0 Prodal of Italy, a privately-owned producer of pizza, bruschetta, and snacks, prompts these questions with its use of ABB FlexPicker robots to automatically spread tomato sauce on its pizza dough.\u00a0 See the process in action <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ggFdvUlp8YU\">in this video<\/a> [1].\u00a0 Food businesses must learn to manage a food system that both feeds the world and honors people\u2019s food values.\u00a0 We consumers of food (and pizza lovers!) have the right and responsibility to influence our food system with our spending decisions, so we must understand how digitalization serves us.<\/p>\n<p>Prodal is concerned with digitalization of its supply chain because of macro industry trends.\u00a0 The food industry is struggling to keep pace with changing consumer preferences:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Diets are constantly evolving. Over forty percent of consumers experimented with their eating patterns last year [2].<\/li>\n<li>Most people use food to treat or prevent more than eight health conditions [2].<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Food product lifecycles are shorter than ever, and \u201cBig Food\u2019s\u201d resulting business performance, lackluster at best, requires supply chain efficiencies to cut costs.\u00a0 While short product lifecycles can trigger innovation [3], today\u2019s dynamic food landscape, and therefore Prodal\u2019s portfolio of products, is changing faster than the company\u2019s traditional supply chain can service.\u00a0 Prodal needs supply chain digitalization to adapt to agile product innovation.\u00a0 \u00a0Digitalization investments need to deliver a pay-back through multiple trend cycles and the nutrition science journey.<\/p>\n<p>Prodal is addressing the need for flexible supply chain productivity by introducing robots into its pizza-production.\u00a0 Spreading tomato sauce on a pizza was previously suitable only for human handiwork, as machines could not replicate human vision.\u00a0 Robots can now \u201cview\u201d each pizza from above and then spread the sauce to the edge of the pizza with meticulous accuracy and at lower cost.\u00a0 Even more impactful is the ability for most advanced robots to be easily re-programmed to complete different tasks across multiple products [4]. \u00a0While robots were likely brought in to reduce direct labor costs, Prodal should see less food waste and fewer worker injuries [5] in the short term.\u00a0 Over the medium-term, Prodal should test its robots on new product prototypes to ensure the robots support gluten free, organic, and other future food trends.\u00a0\u00a0 Without the ability to respond to tomorrow\u2019s wave of innovation, Prodal will miss digitalization\u2019s opportunity to keep pace with consumers\u2019 food needs.<\/p>\n<p>Prodal and other food companies should use digitization to tap an unmet consumer preference: transparency to consumers in where our food comes from.\u00a0 While supply chain innovation to-date has been focused on cost reduction and productivity within manufacturing, Prodal needs to invest in transparent ingredient-tracking and package-labeling to prepare for the future of the industry.\u00a0 Consumers are increasingly turning to local farmer\u2019s markets and food start-ups so that they can better understand where their meal comes from.\u00a0 The cost of managing ingredient data has been a barrier preventing transparency to consumers on labels and online.\u00a0 The opportunity in Italian pizzas is clear.\u00a0 Prodal advertises its superior dough as its pizza\u2019s key differentiator, stating, \u201cIt\u2019s the dough that counts.\u00a0 Prodal combines the selection of the best flours with the rediscovery of classic processes\u201d [6]. \u00a0Since ingredients are core to the strategy, Prodal should invest capital in the creation of digital QR-code labels that share the farm-source and harvesting practices of the dough\u2019s wheat.\u00a0 The investment will pay for itself when consumers can connect with the product more deeply and \u201cvote\u201d with their food values.\u00a0 Pushing digitalization across the value chain will allow Prodal and other companies to build consumer trust and work toward a stronger food system, one in which educated consumers demand foods that balance their individual preferences with the need to feed a growing world population.<\/p>\n<p>Food digitalization address Prodal\u2019s need for a cost-efficient supply chain and flexible new product development.\u00a0 Prodal has just scratched the surface with its use of FlexPickers to spread pizza sauce, and it should address food labeling with digitalization.\u00a0 There are many questions to overcome as digitalization becomes mainstream in the food space.\u00a0 What role should consumers play the global food system &#8211; should we \u201cgive up\u201d food values that make it tougher to feed the world?\u00a0 How can food companies be incented to \u201copen up\u201d about their ingredients and production process when there is a long journey ahead to improve those practices?\u00a0\u00a0 While I will always say, \u201csi, per favore\u201d to authentic Italian pizza, I will now vote for digitalization and transparency with my food purchases (767 words).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Works Cited<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>[1] <em>ABB Robotics \u2013 Pizza Making with ABB FlexPickers.<\/em>\u00a0 Youtube.com.\u00a0 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ggFdvUlp8YU\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ggFdvUlp8YU<\/a><\/p>\n<p>[2] Watrous, Monica.\u00a0 <em>Keeping Pace with Health and Wellness Trends.\u00a0 <\/em>Food Business News. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foodbusinessnews.net\/articles\/news_home\/Consumer_Trends\/2017\/10\/Keeping_pace_with_health_and_w.aspx?ID=%7B6571B5BA-F86B-4607-A3BF-356ED5C3FE13%7D\">http:\/\/www.foodbusinessnews.net\/articles\/news_home\/Consumer_Trends\/2017\/10\/Keeping_pace_with_health_and_w.aspx?ID=%7B6571B5BA-F86B-4607-A3BF-356ED5C3FE13%7D<\/a><\/p>\n<p>[3] Kadaba, Dr. Nagesh and John Cronin. <em>The Complex Role of Innovation in Supply Chain Management.\u00a0 <\/em>Inbound Logistics.\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.inboundlogistics.com\/cms\/article\/the-complex-role-of-innovation-in-supply-chain-management\/\">http:\/\/www.inboundlogistics.com\/cms\/article\/the-complex-role-of-innovation-in-supply-chain-management\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>[4] Sirkin, Hal, Michael Zinser, and Justin Rose.\u00a0 <em>How Robots Will Redefine Competitiveness<\/em>.\u00a0 BCG Publications. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bcg.com\/en-ma\/publications\/2015\/lean-manufacturing-innovation-robots-redefine-competitiveness.aspx\">https:\/\/www.bcg.com\/en-ma\/publications\/2015\/lean-manufacturing-innovation-robots-redefine-competitiveness.aspx<\/a><\/p>\n<p>[5]\u00a0 Studwell, Laura.\u00a0 <em>6 Ways Robots Improve Food and Beverage Operations.\u00a0 <\/em>Packaging Digest.\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.packagingdigest.com\/robotics\/6-ways-robots-improve-food-and-beverage-operations\/page\/0\/5\">http:\/\/www.packagingdigest.com\/robotics\/6-ways-robots-improve-food-and-beverage-operations\/page\/0\/5<\/a><\/p>\n<p>[6] Prodal Website.\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.prodal.eu\/\">http:\/\/www.prodal.eu\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Food producers, such as pizza-maker Prodal of Italy, are embracing digitalization to keep pace with evolving consumer preferences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10208,"featured_media":26241,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","categories":[690,2123,33,37,818,2235,2663,524],"class_list":["post-26240","hck-submission","type-hck-submission","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-consumer-products","category-digitalization","category-food","category-innovation","category-pizza","category-robotics","category-robots","category-transparency","hck-taxonomy-organization-prodal-of-italy","hck-taxonomy-industry-food-and-beverage","hck-taxonomy-country-italy"],"connected_submission_link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-rctom\/assignment\/rc-tom-challenge-2017\/","yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Ciao Metal Molly, I\u2019ll Have Pizza al Taglio, Per Favore - Technology and Operations Management<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, 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