THE COCA-COLA COMPANY - TRANSFORMS ITS GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAIN WITH CONNECTED LEARNING
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CASE STUDY
THE COCA-COLA COMPANY
TRANSFORMS ITS GLOBAL
SUPPLY CHAIN WITH
CONNECTED LEARNING
We are changing the way
our industry builds talent.
-Scott Figura, Global Director of Productivity and
Operational Excellence at The Cola-Cola Company
CHALLENGE
Coca-Cola’s new CEO challenged the company to double the business
in ten years without doubling infrastructure or costs. This aggressive
goal came at a time when Coke’s supply chain was grappling with a
growing global challenge: access to water. These two urgent drivers made
revamping Coke’s supply chain management mindset a mission-critical
priority.
ACTION
To migrate Coca-Cola’s supply chain mindset, Scott Figura, Global
Director of Productivity & Operational Excellence, developed a residential
executive education program for top supply chain leaders with Georgia
Tech’s Scheller College of Business. But Coke also needed to train over
8,000 supply chain managers and front-line employees across the globe.
To reach these leaders, Figura invested in a virtual development solution
rooted in ‘connected learning’— an expert-led virtual learning experience
that is tied to relevant business challenges, integrated into real work, and
engineers collaborative problem solving by groups of learners. In Coke’s
case, virtual teams of leaders worked together on real supply-chain
improvement projects, supported by frameworks and tools delivered
online by subject matter experts and facilitators.
RESULT
Coca-Cola estimates that the projects undertaken as part of the connected
learning program have identified in excess of $25M in cost avoidance
and productivity enhancements, a return of roughly 15-to-1. The program
received a rating of 4.54 out of 5 from participants and garnered a 90%
completion rate. Coke now ranks #9 in Gartner’s “Supply Chain Top 25”
ratings, with the company’s investment in supply chain leadership cited as
a key factor in its success.
© 2014 CUX Inc 1Coke’s achievements are also Vision, supply chain leaders need to think
reflected in the 2013 Gartner broadly about end-to-end management
of the supply chain. According to Scott
CASE STUDY
Supply Chain Top 25 ratings. Coke
Figura, Coca-Cola’s Global Director of
now ranks at #9 worldwide, and the Productivity & Operational Excellence,
report calls out Coke’s investment “We needed strong leaders, operational
in its supply chain leadership and excellence, capable people, and an
university partnership model as a understanding of a holistic supply chain
critical factor in its success. to build our system capability.”
When Muhtar Kent became the CEO of It was a daunting prospect. Coke is
one of the world’s biggest companies— one of the world’s largest employers,
Coca-Cola—in 2008, he set a goal that he encompassing a widely distributed
later described to the Harvard Business network of supply, production, bottling
Review as “not for the fainthearted.” and distribution facilities. Building a
Kent’s plan, “2020 Vision,” called for the better supply chain meant harnessing
organization to double its business in ten and aligning the leadership of a vast and
years without doubling infrastructure or diverse international workforce.
costs. In the 2011 HBR interview, “Shaking
Things Up at Coca-Cola,” Kent said, “I felt
that we needed a vision, a shared picture Figura and Coke’s learning organization
of success—both for us and for our bottling realized they needed to redefine how the
partners.” company developed supply chain talent.
Although it had long focused on building
supply chain excellence in its managers,
the company needed to emphasize
strategic thinking, leadership and network
performance rather than task-level and
individual performance.
Complicating the matter further, a large
chunk of Coke’s supply chain workforce
will be retirement-eligible in the next five
10 YEARS to ten years and in undeveloped markets
the company needed to develop a base of
without doubling infrastructure or cost talent for the first time. “We didn’t have
the core foundation of knowledge that
we needed to drive our business forward,”
noted Figura, “so we had to keep pace to
Imperatives of the 2020 Vision were to replace existing talent and leadership; but
support growth, protect Coke’s brands, in emerging and growth areas, we had to
and ensure sustainability, both commercial build new talent to support our expanding
and environmental. Revamping the business needs.” Adding to the pressure,
supply chain was critical to the success this new supply chain mindset had to be
of each priority. And Coke’s supply chain realized in time to power the performance
organization faced an additional challenge. expectations of the 2020 Vision.
As the maker of products for which water
is the main ingredient, Coke is confronting
the fact that water is becoming scarcer THE CHALLENGE FOR THE LEARNING
around the world due to population growth ORGANIZATION: CASCADING
and climate change. Beyond water-as- TRAINING DEEP INTO THE EXTENDED
ingredient, volatility of water availability
SUPPLY CHAIN
creates other problems as well. Coke cites
the threat of drought and flooding on the Figura turned to Coke’s corporate
company’s supply of sugar cane and sugar university and to Soumen Ghosh, the
beets, as well as citrus for its fruit juices. academic faculty director at Georgia
Tech’s Scheller College of Business, Coke’s
longtime university partner. Ghosh helped
To support the emphasis on commercial Coke develop face-to-face training for the
and environmental sustainability in 2020 company’s top 200 leaders, a custom-
2designed executive education program to virtual learning experience that is tied to
develop the attributes needed to take on relevant business challenges, integrated
the challenges of the 2020 Vision. Georgia into real work, and engineers collaborative
CASE STUDY
Tech is known for its supply chain expertise, problem solving by groups of learners. In
and best-in-class academic thinkers and Coca-Cola’s case, a connected learning
subject-matter experts partnered with key approach had two key benefits over
supply chain leaders from across Coke’s standard e-learning. First, connected
system to design the right content. learning orchestrated collaboration among
participants. This was important because
the terrain is complex and requires
collective problem solving and because
cross-silo collaboration is one of the key
competencies supply chain leaders need to
8,000 learn in order to capture efficiencies across
supply chain the system. Second, learners remained “in
managers & their seats.” This was not only important
for time and cost reasons, but also because
front-line
leaders worked on real projects together
employees in real time, supported by development
throughout the experience.
In short, rather than giving a few leaders
a one-time injection of knowledge, a
Everyone was comfortable with the
connected learning approach would help
custom-designed face-to-face content,
build a lasting culture of leadership for
but the challenge became cascading the
the organization. “A key benefit is that
training throughout the Coca-Cola supply,
this program complements our current
bottling and distribution system. Cost
strategy,” said Figura. “It’s a means of
aside, a residential program would be
activating the right leadership mindset
unable to touch all the people necessary to
and connecting people to collaborate
transform the supply chain mindset in the
and meet goals that they couldn’t meet
required timeframe. Figura commented,
as effectively other ways. It’s a source of
“The top-level program was more of a
knowledge and inspiration for employees
traditional face to face—an immersion
to take their capabilities and perspectives
program. We could do that with a small
to new heights.”
group of leaders…but we couldn’t do that
as we moved down in the organization.
We had geographic constraints, language
“We had geographic constraints, language
constraints. We had to figure out a creative
constraints. We had to figure out a
way to reach a greater scale across all five
creative way to reach a greater scale
geographies that we operate in.”
across all five geographies that we operate
in.”
Coke confronted the logistics of cascading —Scott Figura
to more than 8,000 supply chain managers
and an even bigger population of front-line
employees scattered across the globe. How Participants in the program experienced
could the company extend the training to a highly produced blended learning
the next level of the organization and its approach engineered to foster
partners? And how could they do it in engagement. Guided, paced cohorts
a way that encouraged socialization of engaged with virtual content structured
material in groups as well as collaborative specifically to foster collaboration and
development of holistic solutions rather learning on common business challenges.
than just internalization of the content? Teams were challenged to learn new
frameworks focused on developing end-
to-end solutions to difficult supply chain
BUILDING A LEADERSHIP CULTURE problems. Besides navigating a series of
THROUGH CONNECTED LEARNING interactive virtual coursework, participants
Coke found their solution in an approach learned from Coca-Cola leaders and
called connected learning—an expert-led Georgia Tech faculty, discussed successful
practices and ideas for performance
3improvement, reflected on transferring key
ideas to their work, and developed plans
that applied new knowledge and skills.
CASE STUDY
Most importantly, cohorts were grouped
strategically to allow collaboration both
vertically along the supply chain and
horizontally to gain a global perspective.
Th e fo r m a l d eve l o p m e n t p ro g ra m $99M
was situated within a Virtual Learning in cost
Community (VLC) platform where
participants can share ideas in between avoidance &
formal development experiences. productivity
enhancements
One of the most important features of the
program is an “application” project. Each
cohort was split into smaller teams who were operational leaders at their 1,000 facilities
tasked with defining a problem, proposing around the world. The application projects
a solution, testing their hypothesis, and have generated an average 15-to-1 return. “It’s
then presenting the results and the final a simple calculation between the investment
recommendation. The project needed to of the tuition, plus putting that student in
address performance improvements around the class, and then the financial return that
quality, customer service or cost. This took they achieve coming out of the completion
place throughout the program, both in of the project.”
between and during the formal coursework.
One example of a project pertained to basic
assumptions in the bottling process. A “We needed strong leaders, operational
group identified a time-consuming activity excellence, capable people, and an
that necessitated significant downtime. It understanding of a holistic supply chain to
was assumed that this step saved time later build our system capability.”
in the process. The team experimented to —Scott Figura
validate whether it actually saved time and
found that the process was not efficient
enough to justify itself. The blended design Figura particularly values the communities
of the program became important for what of practice that he has seen spring up
happened next. The team shared this around the program so far in the informal
insight with other learners who were able Virtual Learning Community (VLC) part of
to test and verify the same observation in the platform. New connections have been
their production lines, creating an immediate fostered among supply chain leaders, creating
impact in productivity. That simple step valuable bridges across Coke’s global supply
may not have happened if the program did chain network. “One of the things we really
not provide the opportunity for sustained wanted to accomplish through this program
collaboration only possible virtually. was to connect people with content, and
people with people,” notes Figura. “One
of the consequences of that approach has
ROLLING OUT THE PROGRAM AND really been sharing the diversity of thought.
We have people from different organizations,
MEASURING RESULTS: A 15-TO-1
different geographies, sharing their
RETURN ON INVESTMENT experiences and practices and developing
Although it is still scaling up, Coke’s new new ideas and broadening people’s vision,
global, scalable supply chain leadership which is really exciting because it brings up
development program is already very the entire organization to that desired level
successful by several measures. “We’re of performance.” He says he also appreciates
really encouraged by what we’re seeing,” the “broad accessibility” of the connected
says Figura. With 304 leaders and 224 learning product, “at work, at home, on
managers having completed the program, iPhone, iPad.”
Figura reports that projects undertaken as
part of the connected learning program
have identified in excess of $25M in cost From a participant perspective, the
avoidance and productivity enhancements. experience is engaging. Ninety percent
Eventually the middle management program completion rates and an average evaluation
will reach Coke’s approximately 8,000 score of 4.54 on a 5-point scale suggest
4that the program is creating engagement REFERENCES
in addition to business outcomes. Coke’s
commitment to supply chain leadership has
been recognized in Gartner’s 2013 “Supply Ignatius, A. “Shaking Things Up at Coca-Cola:
Chain Top 25” ratings. Coke now ranks at #9 An Interview with Muhtar Kent,” Harvard
worldwide, and the report calls out Coke’s Business Review, 2011.
investment in its supply chain leadership
and university partnership model as a critical
factor in its success. Additionally, Coke was Davenport, C. “Industry awakens to threat of
recently named one of ELearning! Magazine’s climate change,” New York Times, January
Top 100 on the strength of its supply chain 23, 2014.
management program.
The Gartner Supply Chain Top 25 for 2013.
“At the beginning of our journey, we’ve
—Scott Figura
“At the beginning of our journey, we’ve
already hit a global home run,” says Figura.
“We’re building relationships and onboarding
partnerships, driving business improvements
in growth areas and getting the return on
investment back into the business. We are
changing the way our industry builds talent.”
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