in Case Competition, Graduate Students, News, PEMBADecember 22nd, 2014 The team solved an operati...

1. Team Glooper Troopers Wins Inaugural PEMBA Case
Competition » Questrom School of Business | Blog Archive
in Case Competition, Graduate Students, News, PEMBA
December 22nd, 2014
The team solved an operations problem for Lindt &
Sprüngli
They say that victory is sweet, and for five
Professional Evening MBA (PEMBA) students at
Boston University School of Management, it's not
only sweet--it tastes like milk chocolate. The five-
-Juliana Beauvais, Bobby Mclaughlin, Ram
Meyyappan, Lauren Murphy, and Renata Shypailo,
also known as the Glooper Troopers--clinched the
School's inaugural PEMBA Case Competition, held from November 15-16, 2014, in collaboration
with Swiss chocolatier Lindt & Sprüngi.
Supported by Allen Questrom Professor and Dean Ken Freeman and organized by Professors Erik
Molander and Patricia Hambrick, the competition was the first of its kind, specifically engaging the
School's part-time MBA community and offering its students a chance to showcase their abilities in
front of top executives.
"It was amazing to be able to present to the CEO of Lindt and VP of operations and have our hard
work over the two days acknowledged by them," Mclaughlin said. "Opportunities like this are seldom
available to part-time MBAs at any school, and I was really impressed with the organization of the
entire event and how BU dedicates resources to part-time students."
Together, Mclaughlin and his teammates were the "Glooper Troopers," which is a nod to Augustus
Gloop from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, according to Meyyappan. He said the team was
cohorted together last year and, ironically, Augustus Gloop had been an inside joke from one of the
team's finance classes. "It felt only appropriate to use him again in a chocolate competition."

2. The Glooper Troopers went up against five
other cleverly named PEMBA teams in the
competition: Beyond Compare, Brain Conche,
Pythis, Sweet Science, and Seal Team Six
(Wonka Warriors).
The 32 students were faced with an
operations challenge: As Lindt USA continues
to expand (the company acquired Russell
Stover in July 2014), the company doesn't
want to lose its entrepreneurial spirit, but
seeks to build a platform of shared services so
that its management team can focus on
exploiting local differences that more traditional firms would miss. The students were then asked
what services should be included in this platform, such as HR, finance, logistics, and brand
marketing, whether this shared model could speed time to market and flexibility to meet localized
market needs, and what the appropriate governance mechanism is to manage the boundary between
shared services and localized needs.
Glooper Troopers found that running three distinct, siloed companies in the same sector would not
likely be effective for Lindt & Sprüngi USA. Consolidation of some operations seemed to be the
obvious solution to the team, and marketing--a strength for Lindt--didn't seem to be the best area to
start regarding shared services, according to Beauvais. What's more, she noted, given that Lindt has
its own "bean-to-bar" production, the team didn't want to focus on either purchasing or operations.
Knowing that the company has a longstanding decentralized culture, Murphy said the team
recognized that a shared services model would be a major shift, and that communication and
marketing for internal-change management would be as important as the actual implementation
itself. In conducting their research and preparing their pitch for the judges, she said the Glooper
Troopers wanted to focus on the "why"--why they felt Lindt would benefit from a shared services
model--instead of the "how."
"The competition gave me the invaluable opportunity to use knowledge from all of the classes I have
taken in the PEMBA program and leverage that knowledge in approaching a real-world problem,"
Mclaughlin said.
Not to mention, "as chocolate fans, it was interesting to get a crash course on the industry itself,"
Shypailo added. "During the holiday season, each of us has a newfound appreciation for chocolate
while doing our shopping."