DS Smith Supply Cycle Thinking
DS Smith Supply Cycle Thinking
Designing a localized, agile, zero-waste, circular economy innovation model for the future of Food Manufacturing
Faculty Leads:
Carlos Teixeira
Class:
Organizational Models for Innovation
Students:
Jessica Bogart Kasper
Julia Rochlin
Yun Yang
DS Smith is a leading packaging and assembly company, who provides unique customization, consulting, and just-in-time assembly capabilities for customers around the world. Our goal was to leverage DS Smith’s core entities, combined with local manufacturing resources and innovation centers to enable an agile, zero-waste, circular economy model.
To evolve our model even further, we wanted to introduce a new entity called a Dark Kitchen, which is a shared kitchen model designed for direct-to-consumer food delivery. To test our model’s ability and design for this new function, we designed 5 5-week, low-cost experiments. Together, the experiments are designed to test the viability of the concept along with its ability to integrate into our circular economy model. Experiments are:
Co-design the shared kitchen with key stakeholders
Personalized packaging for D2C orders
Short-run localized manufacturing for special events
Engage consumers in circular supply chain
Engage supermarkets in circular supply chain
“Innovation does not happen just within one organization. It needs other entities to be strategically aligned to help feed different aspects of the model. Through specifically embedded design capabilities, designers are well positioned to help drive these innovation outcomes, the trick is just knowing when and where to deploy them.”
— Jessica Bogart Kasper
