Starbucks

It's Complicated - Complexity Calculator

At the heart of Starbucks is a passion for coffee and a drive to reimagine the coffee experience – for Starbucks' partners (employees), their customers, and the environment. Whether it’s imaginative beverages, advancements in store design, or improvements in technology, innovation is at their core helping push the company in new directions. From how someone orders to how Starbucks brews and more, they're obsessed with finding the newest ways to make things better and easier for their partners and customers. But how does Starbucks know if they're on the right path? How does Starbucks know if they are making things better and easier? The missing link, Starbucks thinks, is a defined methodology for measuring complexity for all types of innovation (products, equipment, systems, etc.) to better inform business decisions and project prioritization. This student team will work to create an objective method for determining/assigning complexity factors to products, equipment, and systems at Starbucks. The method should be applicable to both the physical and non-physical. The deliverable this student team will work to achieve is a repeatable and objective method for defining and calculating complexity at Starbucks. The method this student team will work to create should be able to be used as a standalone factor that can be compared to productivity changes in a product/process/etc. to help Starbucks make more holistic business decisions that keeps the wellbeing of baristas and customers at the core of everything they do.