Poster
Client Context
The Coca-Cola Company (TCCC) is an international beverage corporation founded in 1886 and headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. TCCC focuses on manufacturing, marketing, and selling concentrates and syrups for its non-alcoholic beverages to bottling partners around the world. The company manages more than 500 different brands and is present in over 200 countries.
World Without Waste (WWW) is an environmental initiative launched by The Coca-Cola Company (TCCC). One of their key goals is to achieve 50% recycled PET (rPET) in all of their bottles by 2030. However, as of 2019, they were only at 10%. TCCC heavily influences the purchasing decisions of their bottling partners worldwide regarding how much recycled material to buy, when to buy, and where to buy from. The difficulty in achieving their goal of 50% recycled PET arises because the rPET market is volatile, meaning that the prices constantly fluctuate. Fluctuation in rPET prices makes it difficult for TCCC to develop a clear, long-term, and actionable strategy to meet their goal.
Project Objective
This senior design project focuses on answering the following key questions to help TCCC build a clear strategy in reaching their goal:
When should bottlers purchase rPET?
How much rPET should bottlers purchase?
What will it cost Coca-Cola to reach their goal?
In addition, this project focuses on identifying key drivers influencing rPET prices, and quantifying the relationships between these drivers and rPET prices.
Design Strategy
The scope of our project includes running a regression analysis, establishing a forecasting model, and delivering an rPET purchasing insights tool - all of which would give TCCC better visibility into the rPET market. Our regions of focus are North America and Europe. In the data collection process, we began with six potential independent variables with data ranging from January 2010 to August 2020. After running several regression model fitting methods, the variables selected for our final model included time, Brent crude oil price, and collection rates for both regions. After conducting the forecasting analysis, we determined the forecasting models for North America and Europe.
Deliverables
1. rPET insights tool
The rPET insights tool allows TCCC to understand different purchasing decisions that may influence their goal of reaching 50% recycled material in all bottles by 2030. The purpose of this tool will assist TCCC answer three main questions:
When should bottlers purchase rPET?
How much rPET should bottlers purchase?
What will it cost Coca-Cola to reach their goal?
This tool provides TCCC with insight into purchasing strategies based on seasonality and historic trends. This will allow the company to make more informed sourcing decisions, and ultimately help the World Without Waste organization reach their sustainability goal of having rPET in 50% of bottles sold by 2030. The idea is that TCCC can choose to purchase rPET based on the seasonality of the market for each region.
2. Data Cleaning Workbook & R Forecast Code
The data cleaning workbook will correctly format and manipulate the newly inputted data points for importing the Excel sheets into R so that the client does not have to manually format data and the code runs properly. It is recommended that the client update the forecasting data every 6 months, since any fewer data points will not drastically change the forecast. The code evaluates the 9 possible forecasting models and selects the one with the most ideal statistical measures. The code automatically updates the values in the rPET Insights Tool. This will be key for when TCCC extends the same forecasting methodology to other regions.
3. SOP Manual
The SOP Manual outlines how the client will use the data cleaning workbook and R Code to import the most current data for all variables and continue forecasting in the future.
Project Information
Student Team
Milandi Bezuidenhout
Claudia Campero
Alexandra (Lexi) Colbert
Efrain Eskenazi
Anna Jung
Lucienne Loo
Heather (Lili) Yu
Faculty Advisor
Faculty Evaluator
