In April 2012, Delta Airlines was evaluating the potential purchase of the Trainer Refinery in Philadelphia. Delta had been seriously negotiating and pursuing the purchase of Trainer, owned by Phillips 66, for nearly a year. Although Delta's management team believed that owning Trainer would allow Delta to manage its rising fuel costs, particularly in the Northeast Corridor of the United States, the analysts, markets, and press had categorically criticized the potential purchase. Delta needed to decide quickly.
Environmental issues increasingly influence many aspects of business including strategy, public relations, and supply chain operations. This case looks at how Jamba Juice, a publicly traded smoothie company, will respond to public outcry about its environmental footprint. Jamba Juice CEO James White must determine how to respond to an online petition started by a young California girl who collected over 100,000 signatures asking Jamba Juice to phase out its use of polystyrene foam cups, which she believes to be harmful to the environment. Jamba Juice must consider how phasing out foam cups would impact its core business, brand, and product delivery as well as if it would attract or deter new customers and how it might affect shareholder value. This case also challenges students to examine what makes one product more environmentally benign or harmful than another and how businesses should weigh this information in altering the way they do business amidst significant public scrutiny.
Since early 2009, the information technology (IT) division of a leading manufacturer of semiconductor chips had noticed a growing trend among the company's 80,000 employees worldwide to bring their own smartphones and storage devices to their individual workstations. Recognizing that Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) was not a passing fad but a growing phenomenon, the company decided in January 2010 to formally implement this initiative. As the company's chief information security officer prepares for a full rollout of BYOD, he revisits the issue of ensuring security of corporate data stored on devices owned by individual employees. He also wonders how Intel should respond to the demand for e-Discovery, wherein a litigant could seek access to internal documents stored on devices not owned by the company. He also reflects on a more fundamental and strategic issue: How can Intel extract value from the BYOD initiative and turn this initiative into a new source of competitive advantage?
Since early 2009, the information technology (IT) division of a leading manufacturer of semiconductor chips had noticed a growing trend among the company’s 80,000 employees worldwide to bring their own smartphones and storage devices to their individual workstations. Recognizing that Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) was not a passing fad but a growing phenomenon, the company decided in January 2010 to formally implement this initiative. As the company’s chief information security officer prepares for a full rollout of BYOD, he revisits the issue of ensuring security of corporate data stored on devices owned by individual employees. He also wonders how Intel should respond to the demand for e-Discovery, wherein a litigant could seek access to internal documents stored on devices not owned by the company. He also reflects on a more fundamental and strategic issue: How can Intel extract value from the BYOD initiative and turn this initiative into a new source of competitive advantage?
The chief executive officer of eRAD Inc., a company that develops picture archiving and communications systems for the diagnostic imagery industry, is preparing for an upcoming board meeting, where he will face several challenges related to the potential sale of the company. The founder’s recent death in a plane crash has left the company struggling to meet its financial obligations. On one hand, the sale of eRAD to a larger health care technology company will provide enough money to end the ongoing struggle to keep solvent. On the other hand, the business is on the threshold of profitability, and some board members consider the sale premature. All that remains is to reach agreement on the factoring of debt and a few other financial details to satisfy the many shareholders whose votes are needed to accept the offer.
State Bank of India: SMS Unhappy, is a deceptively simple but comprehensive case of a public sector company using a customer complaint management tool as a catalyst to improve overall service performance and overtaking even its private sector competitors in terms of both customer satisfaction and organizational performance. The case describes a novel, mobile phone-based complaint redressal system designed and implemented by Shiva Kumar, chief general manager (south) of the State Bank of India (SBI). The long-term impact of the simple system was the alignment of the entire organization, especially at the branch level, with customer-defined parameters of performance, driving it towards very high levels of customer-centricity. The SMS Unhappy initiative brought greater levels of transparency to all levels of branch performance, resulting in superior service operations with low variance, and ultimately, better customer response.
"State Bank of India: Kohinoor Banjara Branch is a case that documents the development and execution of a novel, high-end branch by a public sector bank in India whose original mandate was to be a "banker to every Indian." Specifically, it traces the development of the bank's Kohinoor branch to serve the Ultra High Net-Worth Individuals (UHNIs) in Hyderabad, the capital city of the state of Andhra Pradesh in India, and considers the question of whether a national rollout of the concept would be viable and successful. It describes the design and execution of the new branch from the twin perspectives of brand extension and new service operation, and raises questions related to the expansion of the idea on both dimensions, from a pilot level to a full-blown rollout. It also takes into account such factors as customer selection for the extension of a mass brand into the ultra-luxury end, the desired approach to serve such elite customers and the long-term prospects for a luxury extension of a mass service brand. Following the success of the branch in Hyderabad, SBI's associate bank, State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur (SBBJ) planned to launch a Kohinoor-type branch in Jaipur. However, there were important concerns that had to be addressed. On the one hand, SBI had to break free of its legacy image of being an archaic organization, and on the other, it did not want to send out the signal that it was no longer a common man's bank. Given such challenges, SBI was faced with the question: Should it or should it not roll out Kohinoor-type branches across India? "
"The Tata group is among the largest diversified business groups in India. The group generated about US$100 billion in revenues in 2011-12 from 90 companies operating in diverse businesses in seven broad industry categories. The case describes in detail the various mechanisms by which the Tata group attempts to create a corporate or parenting advantage. The case first highlights the important difference in the way a business group like Tata is structured when compared to a typical conglomerate in the West. The case then describes in detail the various services offered to group companies by the corporate centre, such as access to the Tata brand, quality management services, common procurement, centralized HR, legal, finance, public affairs (lobbying), training and consulting services. The case also discusses the perspective of some of the group companies. Companies often found the group affiliation and services to be of value as it provided them with lower transactional costs, less friction and better contract enforcement within the group, superior access to the political power structure and significant financial backing. With the Tata group preparing to welcome its new chairman in December 2012, the case ends with questions on the sustainability of the prevalent structure, practices, group philosophy and culture. "
"This case study illustrates the principles of disruptive innovation in the context of the music industry in India. Widespread technological changes, including the spread of the Internet and mobile penetration, began to redefine the industry in terms of the way music was created, accessed and consumed. With these technological changes sweeping the industry in a relatively short time frame, the cost of music creation and consumption declined rapidly and incumbents began to find it difficult to sustain operations at current profit margins. The Indian music industry was the archetype of an industry disrupted by technological forces. In such a scenario, the case highlights the dilemma of Sony Music India, a large music recording company, which had been operating in the Indian music industry since 1998 and was now exploring the potential options available for growth and profitability in the evolving digital music space. The Indian subsidiary benefits from learning from its parent but operates under a different business model. The case is set in 2012, and places the student in the shoes of Vivek Paul, Head of Digital Media, who is pondering over what form Sony's digital platform offering should take. How different was the Indian music landscape from the West? What were the disruptive impacts? Should the response of the company mirror its parent corporation? What was the economic upside? Should the company sell exclusively through its own site? Should the company launch a separate organization to manage its digital business? "
This case highlights the impact of currency rate fluctuations on the profitability of an export-oriented textile manufacturing firm, TT Textiles. Against the backdrop of the economic crisis of 2007-08, when the Indian rupee (INR) was expected to appreciate to an unprecedented high of 35 INR per U.S. dollar (US$), the company had entered into a swap deal based on the historical stability of the Swiss franc (CHF) against the US$. At the time of making it, the deal had looked relatively safe and very lucrative. But once the global financial crisis struck in 2008, it started making sizable mark-to-market losses. The unexpected behaviour of the supposedly steady exchange rate between the US$ and the CHF was perplexing. Fortunately, things turned around in 2009 and TT Textiles was no longer in the red. Yet, there was uncertainty about the future. In March 2009, with three months left on the contract, Sanjay Jain, the managing director, was faced with the dilemma of whether to quit then and there or hold the deal till maturity.
"This case focuses on production and inventory management at Synthite, an oleoresin manufacturer in Kerala, India. It discusses the problems the company faced in the production of pepper oleoresin, one of its flagship products, and traces the problems to Synthite's make-to-stock (MTS) production strategy, inventory management practices and several material flow practices at the plant. Synthite, established in 1972, had grown to become the largest exporter of spice oleoresins from India, with a 35% share in the global oleoresin business. Yet, the company faced several challenges in inventory management, production planning, and ultimately, in meeting customer expectations on order lead times. Driven by uncertain demand, their ad-hoc finished goods stocking strategy came to naught. Manual transfers of materials in the plant resulted in the waste of resources labour, plant capacity and materials. Extended quality tests on a single order blocked 30% to 50% of production capacity for extended periods. The case provides quantitative data to analyze Synthite's inventory management, material flow and order lead times, and outlines the company's approach to addressing the challenges it faced. Synthite eventually decided to invest in additional production capacity and automated material flow at the plant. It also put into practice the concept of a "motherbatch," the essence of which was to stock semi-finished goods (SFGs) instead of finished goods (FGs). "
Manish Bhardwaj, co-founder of Innovators in Health, is contemplating setting up Aahan, a community based tuberculosis (TB) control program in rural India. The case describes TB diagnosis and treatment in the public and private healthcare sectors in India and the attendant challenges. A number of candidate interventions aimed at improving the existing system of healthcare delivery are presented at the end of the case, each one of which could form the core of Aahan. Students are encouraged to use operations management principles to quantify the potential public health benefits and costs of these interventions and prioritize them accordingly. Key concepts include process flow mapping, flow balance, Little's Law and selection of appropriate process measures based on the strategic objective of the process.
Arunachalam Muruganantham is a social entrepreneur dedicated to solving India's menstrual health problems. He developed an unprecedented product: a low-cost, locally produced sanitary pad. In a paragon effort of frugal innovation, he reverse-engineered the industrial processes used to make sanitary-pads. The result was a small-scale, low-cost machine that could manufacture quality pads sold at a retail price 20% lower than the cheapest mass-produced brands. However, no one bought his pads until his wife began to sell them. Soon the two were unable to keep up with demand. This helped Muruganantham realise the importance of including women as stakeholders in the operation. His next step is to figure out how to scale-up to increase availability and access to the pads.
Senior managers at the LEGO Group are faced with a quandary: Should they patent inventions coming out of their manufacturing process development work, should they keep them as trade secrets, or should they publish them so that they would go into the public domain and nobody else could patent them? They wish to preserve their freedom to practice, but they are very concerned about competitors' ability to benefit from LEGO Group's R&D investments or alternately interfere with its freedom to operate.
Tata Consultancy Services' (TCS) Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) division faces the challenge of retaining their Generation-Y employees, with seven out of a thirteen-person team quitting within a month. Workforce dynamics in the BPO industry in India are a high growth area and employees often have offers from several respected competing firms. In particular, the thriving industry has a great impact on Generation-Y in India, which makes up an increasingly large share of the workforce. To this end, TCS has made significant efforts towards both engaging their Generation-X employees and retaining their Generation-Y employees - leaving the human resource head, Jagdish Chaudhari wondering what more needed to be done after this latest episode.
A123 Systems successfully went to market with new technologies that had the potential to revolutionize both the energy storage and electric battery industries. After opening the largest hybrid vehicle battery manufacturing facility in North America, CEO David Vieau needs to evaluate the road forward. Should he try to gain a foothold in established commercial battery markets or pursue the company's current mission of being the top supplier for grid storage and hybrid vehicles? Was he expanding too fast or not fast enough? Was Asia a potential avenue for future growth, a source of menacing competition, or both?