DLT360: KANBAN Platform for Boosting Supply-Chain Efficiency (Concept)

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

DLT360

[GENERAL] Are you delivering this project as an individual or as an entity (whether formally incorporated or not)

Entity (Not Incorporated)

[GENERAL] Please specify how many months you expect your project to last (from 2-12 months)

4

[GENERAL] Please indicate if your proposal has been auto-translated into English from another language

No

[GENERAL] Summarize your solution to the problem (200-character limit including spaces)

Detailed Concept of an open, blockchain-based industrial KANBAN System for global participation and connectors to major material management systems such as SAP.

[GENERAL] Does your project have any dependencies on other organizations, technical or otherwise?

No

[GENERAL] If YES, please describe what the dependency is and why you believe it is essential for your project’s delivery. If NO, please write “No dependencies.”

No dependencies.

[GENERAL] Will your project’s output/s be fully open source?

No

[GENERAL] Please provide here more information on the open source status of your project outputs

Publicly available deliverables

Our general ambition is to make this KANBAN CONCEPT available based on a suitable open source license. Nevertheless, establishing the Requirements Specification, the Solution Specification Business Model Specification and the PoC requires the close cooperation with business and industry experts, who might require certain information to be confidential.

It is therefore currently impossible to decide, if all the results of this KANBAN CONCEPT can be published according to openSource licensing. Therefore we decided to declare the following outcome as 'publicly available deliverables' (and some other outcome as 'not publicly available' as described further below). Here the publicly available deliverables:

• KANBAN Pitch-Deck: see detailed description later in this proposal
• KANBAN Pitch-Video: see detailed description later in this proposal
• KANBAN Website: The public part of the dedicated Website

Not publicly available (can be made on-demand available upon request and agreement)

At this very moment, the access to following outputs of this project need to be restricted due to the above mentioned reasons. These confidential output are:

• KANBAN Requirements Specification (see description later in this proposal)
• KANBAN Solution Specification (see description later in this proposal)
• KANBAN Business Model Specification (see description later in this proposal)
• Design Thinking Workshop documentation

[METADATA] Horizons

Supply Chain

[SOLUTION] Please describe your proposed solution

Rationale

In supply-chain management, industrial KANBAN material supply solutions stand for a VERY substantial optimization potential. By introducing a PULL principle all across the supply-chain, a self-regulating system for increasing flexibility, efficiency & resilience can be established. This makers KANBAN-supply very attractive. Unfortunately, today’s central solutions are too complex, expensive and are introducing critical dependencies and risks. So far, the game-changing capabilities of Web3.0 solutions based on Blockchain and AI have not (yet) been sufficiently understood by corporate decision makers.

Purpose of this CANBAN Concept

KANBAN is a door-opening Web3.0 application for supply-chains of the future, but for implementing a Web3.0-based KANBAN solution (at scale) into corporate environment, a complex ‘buying network’ with various typical stakeholders needs to be convinced and won-over from scepticism to promotership. Especially corporate risk-management, legal departments and the 'Web2.0 and Cloud-Computing-socialised’ CIO and CISOs need to be convinced. This requires strict focus on BUSINESS-BENEFITS, REDUCTION OF RISKS and on WINNING OVER PEOPLE. This also requires understanding corporate PROCESSES and ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURES. Only after overcoming these hurdles, detailed TECHNOLOGY arguments play an important role. Following this understanding, we identify, analyze and outline the most promising industrial KANBAN applications for business and industry.

Deliverables of this Concept Phase

• Requirements Specification
• Solution Specification
• Business Model Specification
• Pitch-Deck
• Pitch-Video
• Website (Dedicated part of DLT360 Website)
• Design Thinking Workshop

Summary & Next Steps 

The KANBAN Concept is a key-element of our overall DLT360 business approach. This (together with our other proposals submitted to Fund 13) is an important milestone in succeeding with our lean and iterative startup strategy. Once this Concept is in place, we plan - hand in hand with partners from the Cardano Community - to develop the MVP in Fund 14 and scale this solution with first real-world customer implementation projects. 

[IMPACT] Please define the positive impact your project will have on the wider Cardano community

Value to the Cardano Community:

• Bringing industrial adoption to Cardano - the proposal is increasing the outreach of Cardano to industrial clients, who will be involved in the specification process, Proof-of-Concept (PoC), in subsequent developments and implementations. This application has the potential to scale very rapidly, thus driving the adoption of Cardano in the supply chain automation area.

• Proximity and compliance with the emerging European NGI initiatives and solutions (NGI: Next Generation Internet initiatives within the European Digital Decade 2030 program)

• Utilization of latest Web 3.0 architectures

• Increase of transaction volume and usage - Based on this potential to drive a high transaction volume, there will be a positive effect on the overall market position of Cardano, once the real applications are developed and implemented at scale.

How to measure the impact ?

To measure the success of the project, we will employ a combination of quantitative and qualitative measures. The following are some key areas we intend to measure: 

• Measuring the impact of this KANBAN Concept Project

1. Number of business and industry experts attracted and interested
2. Number of business and industry experts involved in specification process and PoC
3. Number of Cardano Community members and projects involved

• Measuring later impact of actual development (not subject to this proposal)
• Measuring final impact of implementing at scale (not subject of this proposal)

How we will share the outputs and opportunities that result from this project?

The way we plan to make the results of this project available has been described in the 'Open Source Section' earlier in this proposal. Due to the nature of the project, this will be a mix of publicly available and not publicly available outputs (this is unavoidable due to the nature of the resulting outputs).

The publicly available parts of our outputs will be shared as following:

• Over the DLT360 Website
• Over LinkedIn and YouTube (the promotional elements)
• By delivering to the Cardano Catalyst Community based on the valid reporting standards

[CAPABILITY & FEASIBILITY] What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability? How do you intend to validate if your approach is feasible?

DLT360 was founded by an ambitious core-team coming from many years of leadership experience in business and industry, combined with the fresh perspective of young talents in various disciplines (see CVs and team description later in this proposal). The senior founders have also been active members of and contributors to the Catalyst community since early-on. DLT360 has successfully completed all earlier projects from Fund 6, 7 and 8. This project is now a major element of orchestrating many of the previous projects, making us finally ready for scaling up the work with Corporate Clients from business and industry. 

 Our team (including the closely linked free-lancers) has many years of experience in:

• Innovation Management
• Specific knowledge about industrial process and supply-chain transformation
• Specific knowledge of activities and regulations of the European Union
• Strong network to key-players within industry, academia and within the various EU-initiatives
• Expert-level knowledge about Enterprise Architecture Frameworks
• Expert-level knowledge about Quality Management according to ISO9001 and Cybersecurity according to ISO27001
• Expert-level knowledge about Business Model & Value Proposition Development
• Expert-level knowledge about UX, design and branding
• Expert-level knowledge about Program Management, Project Management and Scrum (Scrum of Scrum)
• Access to full-stack development resources
• Expert Knowhow in business administration, controlling and reporting

We use best-practice infrastructure and tools like e.g. GitHub and MIRO for supporting our collaborative processes and document management.

[PROJECT MILESTONES] What are the key milestones you need to achieve in order to complete your project successfully?

Milestone Title:

Project setup & planning and drafting the detailed content-structure of the deliverables

Milestone Outputs:

1. Project infrastructure and detailed planning of the project
2. Team in place, kickoff event
3. Precise definition of the content-structure of the deliverables, which will consist of

• Requirements Specification
• Solution Specification
• Business Model Specification
• Pitch-Deck
• Pitch-Video
• Website: Dedicated part of the DLT360 Website
• Design Thinking Workshop

Acceptance Criteria:

1. Project setup including project plan in GitHub completed
2. Roles defined and resources allocated (team in place), kickoff-meeting done
3. Detailed definition of deliverables established (in MIRO and as document content structure draft in version V0.01)

Evidence of Milestone Completion:

We will deliver a brief video in which we will go through the individual outputs, the acceptance criteria and the evidence. The video will cover:

1. Showing Github setup and the detailed project planning,
2. Explaining the project organization, introducing key-people and reporting the outcome of the kickoff meeting
3. Demonstrating and explaining the MIRO Board with the detailed definition of the deliverables of this project by showing the content-structure of the folwing deliverables:

• Requirements Specification
• Solution Specification
• Business Model Specification
• Pitch-Deck
• Pitch-Video
• Website: Dedicated part of the DLT360 Website
• Design Thinking Workshop

Milestone Title:

Draft Versions (V0.10) of Requirements Specification and Solution Specification in place

Milestone Outputs:

After establishing the content-structure of the deliverables in milestone 1, milestone 2 focuses on content creation. This will result in completed draft version of the Requirements Specification (V0.10) and the Solution Specification (V0.10) with approximately 80% completion state.

Acceptance Criteria:

Part 1: Content Draft (V0.10) of Requirements Specification (the actual chapter-structure was the deliverable of the preceding milestone 1, therefore the structure shown here below is only for orientation and might change based on learnings along the project):

1. Executive Summary
2. Introduction
3. Problem Definition
4. Vision, Mission and Value Proposition(s)
5. Solution Approach
6. Target Customer & Buying Center Definition
7. Market Analysis
8. Legal & Regulatory Requirements
9. Business Requirements regarding benefits and risks
10. UX and User-Requirements
11. Requirements regarding Enterprise Integration, Organization, Processes & Tools
12. Case Study with Customer Business Value Proposition

Part 2: Content Draft (V0.10) of the Solution Specification (the actual chapter-structure was the deliverable of the preceding milestone 1, therefore the structure shown here below is only for orientation and might change based on learnings along the project):

1. Executive Summary
2. Introduction
3. Partnerships
4. Architectural Vision
5. Business Architecture
6. Information Systems Architecture (Application & Data Architecture)
7. Technology Architecture
8. Opportunities & Solutions
9. Migration Planning
10. Implementation Governance
11. Architecture Change Management
12. Summary and Next Steps

Evidence of Milestone Completion:

We will deliver a brief video in which we will go through the individual outputs, the acceptance criteria and the evidence. As evidence we will provide:

• Report about the major stages of the work process
• Introduction to the content of the draft documents of the Requirements Specification and Solution Specification

We will also provide links to the draft documents for allowing deeper-going review.

Milestone Title:

Completion of Requirements Specification, Solution Specification, Business Model Specification, and of the dedicated Website section, the Pitch-Deck and the Pitch-Video

Milestone Outputs:

Milestone 3 will deliver the following outputs:

1. Final version of the Requirements Specification
2. Final version of the Solution Specification
3. Business Model Specification
4. Website
5. Promotive Pitch-Deck and Pitch-Video

Acceptance Criteria:

The outputs of Milestone 3 are validated by following acceptance criteria:

1. Requirements Specification (V1.00) completed
2. Solution Specification (V1.00) completed
3. Business Model Specification (V01.00) completed
4. Dedicated Part of Website available
5. Promotive Pitch-Deck and Pitch-Video (V01.00) completed

Evidence of Milestone Completion:

We will deliver a brief video in which we will go through the individual outputs, the acceptance criteria and the evidence. As evidence we will provide:

1. Showing and explaining of the released Requirements Specification
2. Showing and explaining of the released Solution Specification
3. Showing and explaining of the released Business Model Specification
4. Showing and presenting the Website
5. Showing and presenting the Pitch-Deck and Pitch Video

We will also provide links for allowing deeper-going review.

Milestone Title:

Completion of PoC-Workshop and final release of all agreed deliverables

Milestone Outputs:

1) Design Thinking Workshop

• Completed DesignThinking Workshop
• Summary and documentation of results

2) Updating of all Deliverables

• Updating all Deliverables according to workshop feedback
• Final Release of Deliverables (V1.00 or V1.01)

3) Internal Project Closing with

• Conducting Retrospective Meeting
• Gathered reportable data & facts

4) External Project Closing

• Closeout Report
• Closeout Video

Acceptance Criteria:

1) Design Thinking Workshop Summary completed

2) Deliverables updated and released (V1.00 or V1.01)

3) Closeout Report completed

4) Closeout Video completed

Evidence of Milestone Completion:

We will deliver a brief video in which we will go through the individual outputs, the acceptance criteria and the evidence. As evidence we will provide:

1. Showing and explaining the Design Thinking Workshop results
2. Present all finalized and released Deliverables
3. Hand over Project Closeout Report
4. Present Closeout Video

We will also provide all required links for allowing deeper-going review.

[RESOURCES] Who is in the project team and what are their roles?

Project Lead

• Heinz Gassner, founder and CEO of DLT360 comes from 30+ years of experience in technology marketing, strategic business model development and Digital Transformation leadership positions in renowned manufacturing companies. In addition to this, Heinz has education and experience in general business administration and regulatory matters and is just completing his latest M.Sc. in DLT/Blockchain at University of Malta. Due to his long industry-career, Heinz also has a strong personal network within the business and industry leadership community. Heinz has been engaged with CARDANO since 2017 and is an active player within the Catalyst community since the very first town-hall. See LinkedIn 

• Thorsten Pottebaum, co-founder and CTO of DLT360. Thorsten is also a very active player within the Cardano Catalyst community. Thorsten comes from a background of financial management and has more than 20 years of experience as Enterprise Architect within the IT and cybersecurity space (cybersecurity audit program manager) as well as with business development across multiple markets and industries, including Healthcare, Energy and General Manufacturing.. See LinkedIn

Key Contributors & Coordinators

• Jonas Weinberger, co-founder of DLT360. Jonas has recently graduated from the Brussels School of Governance. Jonas is a regular contributor to DLT360’s legal work-stream and is an active part of the DLT360 research team. Jonas is also our internal mastermind in design, presentation as well as video production. Currently, Jonas is Master Student in Branding, Design and UX at University of Barcelona, Spain. See LinkedIn 

• Guilherme Pereira, co-founder of DLT360, recently completed his M.Sc. in Mechatronics in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Guilherme is our mastermind behind our program- and project management. Guilherme also coordinates our Brazilian free-lancers for back-office and software (PoC) coding. See LinkedIn

 

Domain Experts from Academia, Industry and Cardano Community

• During this project, we will consult with our various domain experts from academia and industry for securing the required academic- and practical anchoring.

Development Resources and Freelance Assistance

Besides our core-team, this project will be supported by freelance and partner resources:

• Back-office team (Brazil)
• Full-stack Development team, freelance but closely linked (Brazil)
• Domain Experts from industry and academia for assisting us on demand 
• External partnerships

[BUDGET & COSTS] Please provide a cost breakdown of the proposed work and resources

[VALUE FOR MONEY] How does the cost of the project represent value for money for the Cardano ecosystem?

1) VALUE

Pease note that this project can produce VERY substantial value. With this approach, many of the historic mistakes of developing premature applications before understanding product/market-fit (customer needs and implementation context) can be avoided. It is difficult to quantify, but prematurely announced, ‘hyped’ and then failed industry applications can be of great harm to the reputation of the entire Cardano ecosystem. This CANBAN CONCEPT helps avoiding such issues and provides the foundation for finally getting to real-world-adoption at scale.

2) For MONEY

The following background is important for understanding the calculation of our average global hourly rates:

 

• For the applied average hourly rates, please note that the DLT 360 Team is located in Europe, UK and Brazil. We also need to engage high-level external experts on-demand, coming from various disciplines in academia and industry. This requires rather high hourly rates, which are influencing the overall averages. 
• Whenever possible, we are allocating tasks to our team in Brazil (eg. back-office work, project management work, research and development assistance)
• Our applied (average) hourly rates cover
• Costs for travel & accommodation
• General administration, operations and marketing overhead
• Costs of general office infrastructure and tools
• Tax, insurances and social security expenses
• Special crypto-related legal and tax consulting expenses
• EXCHANGE RATE RISK MANAGEMENT