Sealed
Páginas: 48 (11954 palabras)
Publicado: 10 de abril de 2012
ELIE OFEK
Sealed Air Corporation: Deciding the Fate of VTID
Sealed Air was probably best known for inventing and commercializing Bubble Wrap, a packaging material used to protect products during shipping (see Exhibit 1 for images). But it was also a company that had grown over the years through innovation and new market development. Consequently, when in 2003 some of Sealed Air‟s largestcustomers in the industrial meat sector expressed a need for being able to trace processed meat back to the original source, Hickey did not hesitate to set up a dedicated team to generate a solution. After two years of intensive product development efforts, Sealed Air created a technology that it would later call Vision Tracking and Identification, or VTID. By using sophisticated mathematicalalgorithms to analyze streams of video from surveillance cameras at meat processing plants, the technology enabled the unique tracing of each piece of meat that eventually reached consumers back to the animal from which it originated—thus assisting meat companies in responding to food recalls more quickly and more efficiently. Unfortunately, by the time the prototype was working, potential customerswere unwilling to adopt VTID. Unfazed by the meat companies‟ reaction, and believing the technology had huge potential, Hickey urged the VTID team to explore other applications. After several more years of product development, the technology could now monitor hundreds of daily human movements and alert management when employee actions deviated from those intended or if workers were engaging in unsafebehaviors, such as not wearing gloves or protective glasses. Following an unsuccessful attempt to market the technology as an employee safety tool, in the spring of 2010 the team finally felt it had found VTID‟s calling: the quick-serve restaurant (QSR) sector. Keith Johnson, Director of Services Sales and Marketing, spearheaded efforts to develop this market. He piloted VTID at a sandwich shopin the greater St. Paul, Minneapolis area that was part of a franchised chain of stores with about 50 locations in the U.S. After several months in which VTID had been properly identifying food safety lapses and providing valuable opportunities for employee training, Johnson managed to schedule a meeting with the organization‟s corporate COO. Hickey was eager to hear the outcome of this meetingduring the upcoming conference call with Johnson.
Do
No
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Professor Elie Ofek prepared this case with help from Research Associate Polly Ross Ribatt. HBS cases are developed solely as the basis for class discussion. Cases are not intended to serve as endorsements, sources ofprimary data, or illustrations of effective or ineffective management. Copyright © 2011 President and Fellows of Harvard College. To order copies or request permission to reproduce materials, call 1-800-545-7685, write Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, MA 02163, or go to www.hbsp.harvard.edu/educators. This publication may not be digitized, photocopied, or otherwise reproduced, posted, ortransmitted, without the permission of Harvard Business School.
This document is authorized for use only by Alexander Varon Sandoval until May 2012. Copying or posting is an infringement of copyright. Permissions@hbsp.harvard.edu or 617.783.7860.
tC
op yo
On a busy morning in late May 2010, William V. Hickey, President and CEO of Sealed Air Corporation, got up from his chair at theconclusion of a meeting on expanding operations in emerging markets. Pleased that his company was poised for healthy growth in all BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) markets, he now rushed back to his office for a conference call in which he hoped to hear good news about an entirely different company initiative.
rP os t
9-512-029
REV: OCTOBER 28, 2011
512-029
Sealed Air Corporation:...
Sealed Air Corporation: Deciding the Fate of VTID
Sealed Air was probably best known for inventing and commercializing Bubble Wrap, a packaging material used to protect products during shipping (see Exhibit 1 for images). But it was also a company that had grown over the years through innovation and new market development. Consequently, when in 2003 some of Sealed Air‟s largestcustomers in the industrial meat sector expressed a need for being able to trace processed meat back to the original source, Hickey did not hesitate to set up a dedicated team to generate a solution. After two years of intensive product development efforts, Sealed Air created a technology that it would later call Vision Tracking and Identification, or VTID. By using sophisticated mathematicalalgorithms to analyze streams of video from surveillance cameras at meat processing plants, the technology enabled the unique tracing of each piece of meat that eventually reached consumers back to the animal from which it originated—thus assisting meat companies in responding to food recalls more quickly and more efficiently. Unfortunately, by the time the prototype was working, potential customerswere unwilling to adopt VTID. Unfazed by the meat companies‟ reaction, and believing the technology had huge potential, Hickey urged the VTID team to explore other applications. After several more years of product development, the technology could now monitor hundreds of daily human movements and alert management when employee actions deviated from those intended or if workers were engaging in unsafebehaviors, such as not wearing gloves or protective glasses. Following an unsuccessful attempt to market the technology as an employee safety tool, in the spring of 2010 the team finally felt it had found VTID‟s calling: the quick-serve restaurant (QSR) sector. Keith Johnson, Director of Services Sales and Marketing, spearheaded efforts to develop this market. He piloted VTID at a sandwich shopin the greater St. Paul, Minneapolis area that was part of a franchised chain of stores with about 50 locations in the U.S. After several months in which VTID had been properly identifying food safety lapses and providing valuable opportunities for employee training, Johnson managed to schedule a meeting with the organization‟s corporate COO. Hickey was eager to hear the outcome of this meetingduring the upcoming conference call with Johnson.
Do
No
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Professor Elie Ofek prepared this case with help from Research Associate Polly Ross Ribatt. HBS cases are developed solely as the basis for class discussion. Cases are not intended to serve as endorsements, sources ofprimary data, or illustrations of effective or ineffective management. Copyright © 2011 President and Fellows of Harvard College. To order copies or request permission to reproduce materials, call 1-800-545-7685, write Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, MA 02163, or go to www.hbsp.harvard.edu/educators. This publication may not be digitized, photocopied, or otherwise reproduced, posted, ortransmitted, without the permission of Harvard Business School.
This document is authorized for use only by Alexander Varon Sandoval until May 2012. Copying or posting is an infringement of copyright. Permissions@hbsp.harvard.edu or 617.783.7860.
tC
op yo
On a busy morning in late May 2010, William V. Hickey, President and CEO of Sealed Air Corporation, got up from his chair at theconclusion of a meeting on expanding operations in emerging markets. Pleased that his company was poised for healthy growth in all BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) markets, he now rushed back to his office for a conference call in which he hoped to hear good news about an entirely different company initiative.
rP os t
9-512-029
REV: OCTOBER 28, 2011
512-029
Sealed Air Corporation:...
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