Author: paschmann

Whole Foods – Case Study

paschmann

Notes: (Paper below)

John Mackey started Safer Way in 1978 focused on entirely vegetarian foods. Joined forces with Craig Weller, Mark Skiles who founded Clarksville Natural Grocery Store in 1979. JV took place in Austin, TX with 19 people. Whole Foods also owns and operates several subsidiaries – e.g. Allegro Coffee, Pigion Cove. Company has 8 distribution centers, 7 regional bake houses and 4 commissaries.

Company is highly selective about what they sell – stringent quality, sustainable agriculture.

WF products differ by geographic regions and local farm specialities.

Company tries to instill a sense of purpose among its employees – 100 best companies to work for. 90% enjoy their job. read more

Posted in MBA

Open Source Project & Paper: Blockchain proof of concept

paschmann

Late last year I wrote a small paper (for my MBA program) and developed an accompanying proof of concept (Javascript/Node/P2P) on the implementation of blockchain in the retail or food distribution network around protecting goods from food fraud.

Source Code: https://github.com/paschmann/blockchain_origin

Abstract

Food fraud is a crime which has the potential to negatively affect the brand image, financial resources and impact multiple parties in the supply chain paradigm of food distribution. The ability to track and trace the origin and touch points of products throughout the network is imperative to limit the impact caused by a food fraud incident or a food safety issue. Blockchain has the potential to disrupt multiple industries by providing a shared and trusted ledger of transactions which no single company controls. One practical application of blockchain is utilizing the platform as a static register – a distributed database for storing reference data. In this paper I will describe a technical implementation of a blockchain in a practical scenario which shares the details and a proof of concept of a food origin scenario. The implementation will share a simplistic JavaScript application of a digital ledger based blockchain allowing manufacturers to register data on the food origin in the static registry and vested parties the ability to augment and view the data for the purpose of traceability and accuracy. read more

King Kullen

paschmann

It’s a relevant and intriguing story of how one employee at Kroger, Michael Kullen, wrote a 6 page letter to a Kroger VP, encouraging them to consider a different business model. He was not taken seriously, resigned from Kroger and opened his own grocery chain called King Kullen. It is considered Americas First Supermarket due to it having separate departments; self-service; discount pricing; chain marketing; and volume dealing. In 2007 King Kullen had revenues of $800 million and operates 32 stores in New York state.

MBA: WeDo Technologies Strategy Study

paschmann

  • WEDO is a EBA software/platform company
  • WeDo Consulting started in 2001
  • Spinoff from Portuguese Optimus which was a telecom company
  • In 2004 WeDo had grown to 5 countries with annual revenues of Eur20 million and 270 employees
  • Products included RAID for telecoms – monitored billing and invoicing for abnormalities and triggered alerts and warnings when something did not look right. This allowed the company to react verus wait until the month end reporting was done
  • Company made various acquisitions to protect its market share and reduce competition
  • In 2010 the company made a strategic decision to innovate their product using internal funds
    • To protect market share
    • Expand their market to retail, fi, etc.
    • Develop new capabilities
      • read more

    • Posted in MBA