Tasty Baking Company July 09 www. bus- ex. com 91 hand. The early cakes were produced in white, yellow, chocolate, raisin, molasses and sponge cake varieties. After baking- initially in a single oven- the cakes were iced, cut into rectangles, wrapped, packed into boxes and distributed to retailers, who sold them for a few cents each. In its first year the company had gross revenues of $ 300,000. By 1918, sales had reached $ 1 million. Fast- forward to the 1990s, when the company owned two bakeries, the flagship six- story facility in Philadelphia and a smaller plant in nearby Oxford. Major financial problems in 2000/ 01 forced the board of directors of the company to bring in a new CEO, Charles Pizzi, who brought a new team with him, including Autumn Bayles as CIO. As part of the company turnaround, she spent three years building a new IT team, changing the technology infrastructure and software platforms to SAP, and rebuilding the applications and data center from the ground up. She was then asked to take over the operations head position, as senior vice president of strategic operations, responsible for supply chain analytics, research and development, quality assurance, manufacturing, distribution, transportation, and strategy. One of the final projects on the turnaround list was to determine the future of the aging flagship Philadelphia plant. A strategy project determined that there was significant upside to constructing a