Operations network design is about where to locate your supply sources and manufacturing and distribution operations, as well as the deployment of such operations, i.e., who should be supplying whom. With the emergence of global supply and manufacturing sources and the global market, such a design will increasingly have to span multiple regions. In the design, we have to capture the quantitative impacts of such factors like fixed and variable costs of production or distribution facilities, inventory, freight, and other logistics costs. The global network requires explicit treatment of taxes, customs and duties. This case is about Renault's recent car Logan, which was designed to serve markets in emerging markets like Eastern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. The company has designed its supply chain to take advantage of the special customs and duties treaties in these regions. The case illustrates the complexities of such design decisions, and the approaches one needs to take. The case also ends with a key decision that Renault has to make - how to set up the supply chain for the new market in South Africa. Again, the customs and duties implications play a big role in such a decision.

The case describes the unique business model of Rehabilitation Alliance Hong Kong (RAHK) beginning with its strategic alliance with Dairy Farm to run 7-Eleven convenience stores, with an aim to create job opportunities for its disabled members. The two managers then try out other forms of business, but they are not commercially effective. The case intends to explore the challenges of managing a cooperative relationship with a social conscience and achieving social enterprise sustainability through innovation.

In the tenth year of their business, Circles' co-founders, Janet Kraus and Kathy Sherbrooke, had completed a successful exit for their company. They had worked closely for years, building their early venture into a leading provider of concierge services with over $40 million in annual revenues. In preparing the company for exit, the two not only had to package the business for sale, but also prepare themselves for the next phases of their careers. Sherbrooke would move on to a corporate role with the acquirer, Sodexho, as the CEO of Circles, and Kraus would take on leading an early stage company, Spire, a Circles spinoff. The transition would not be just one for the company, but also one for their relationship as co-founders and true business partners.

Through the example of the high-profile Eurotunnel project, the case shows how important contracts and agreements are in project management. Seen through a retrospective lens, it allows students to analyse the relative contributions of market uncertainty, technical uncertainty, and behaviour alignment through contracts, to the performance problems of the effort to construct the first-ever undersea rail link between France and the UK.

This case focuses on the topic of strategic selection, specifically whether or not the Taj Group should invest in The Pierre Hotel in New York. The case write-up includes information about the Taj Group, the Tata Group, The Pierre Hotel, the hotel industry, the Taj's domestic and international strategies, related challenges, investment options and selection criteria. It also includes various exhibits for the user to analyse: Taj's corporate holding structure, its financial highlights, strategic planning process, organisational chart, and the company's action plan development and deployment process.

The case charts the past decade of online grocery retailing at Tesco.com and the development and launch of the non-food operation "Tesco Direct". Tesco implemented a unique fulfillment model by using its vast network of bricks-and-mortar supermarkets across the UK to pick the items ordered by online customers.

The largest retailer of diesel fuel in the U.S., Flying J, is rethinking its growth strategy as the economy goes into a recession. Its major customer base, owner-operated truck drivers, are facing increasing costs of doing business. Yet Flying J is considering whether to increase its price of diesel fuel.

This case concerns the selection and scheduling of orders by a small industrial titanium fabricator that recently has been plagued by poor deliveries and a lack of capacity. At the time of the case, Ti-Tech must decide which of four orders to accept, with capacity making it impossible to accept all four. Each order represents a different mix of labor, revenues, and potential future work. The case forces the student to choose among the four orders, given limited capacity available, other business likely to come along, and the requirements of each order. The case is an updated version of Fabtek (A).

This case concerns the selection and scheduling of orders by a small industrial titanium fabricator that recently has been plagued by poor deliveries and a lack of capacity. At the time of the case, Ti-Tech must decide which of four orders to accept, with capacity making it impossible to accept all four. Each order represents a different mix of labor, revenues, and potential future work. The case forces the student to choose among the four orders, given limited capacity available, other businesses likely to come along, and the requirements of each order. The case is an updated version of an earlier supplement, Fabtek (B). It should be distributed in class after discussion of the (A) case.

What caused the 1997 Korea crisis? Did the International Monetary Fund (IMF) help or hinder recovery? Did democracy help or hinder recovery? Seen as an economic miracle, Korea succumbed to the wave of currency crises sweeping Asia in late 1997. Did the same state-led export growth strategy that had brought about such spectacular success cause this financial meltdown? Conversely, what role had foreign investors played in setting up the crisis by pouring short-term capital into Korea's partially and unevenly liberalized financial system? When it arrived on the scene, did the IMF do more to help Korea recover from its economic distress, or did it just bail out foreign investors and prepare the way for Wall Street to up buy Korean banks and firms? Had Korea's long move toward democracy helped or hindered government efforts to reform its economic strategy and to resolve the current crisis? This case explains the background to explore these questions.

The protagonist ("Howard Glass") is a recent GSB graduate (2007) heading up a biomedical team start-up focused on the gastric bypass method. The case tracks Glass and team from the team foundation and idea generation phases through the company's first 6 - 7 months of operation, as Minova burns through what little money it has and actively looks to close a seed of funding.

In 2007, JetBlue faced enormous criticism from its customers and the media after a Valentine's Day storm led to delays and cancellations. How did the airliner navigate the crisis? In this case students study communication strategies developed from scientific research on the process of persuasion that can help brands recover from adverse publicity and regain their customers' trust. Six examples illustrate a range of actions - such as the "come clean" response and "polish the halo" response - and teach students how to apply various communication frameworks.

ECCO A/S (ECCO) had been very successful in the footwear industry by focusing on production technology and assuring quality by maintaining full control of the entire value chain from "cow to shoe." As ECCO grew and faced increased international competition, various value chain activities, primarily production and tanning, were offshored to low-cost countries. The fully integrated value chain tied up significant capital and management attention in tanneries and production facilities, which could have been used to strengthen the branding and marketing of ECCO's shoes. Moreover, an increasingly complex and dispersed global value chain configuration posed organizational and managerial challenges regarding coordination, communication and logistics. This case examines the financial, organizational and managerial challenges of maintaining a highly integrated global value chain and asks students to determine the appropriateness of this set-up in the context of an increasingly market-oriented industry. It is suitable for use in both undergraduate and graduate courses in international corporate strategy, international management, international marketing, supply-chain management, cross-border strategic management and international business studies in general.

The year 2007 had to have been one of the worst in the history of British Petroleum plc (BP). In the span of four months, two separate independent reports (the first one commissioned by BP itself) had identified a deeply rooted "culture of risk" within BP where money and profits were valued above worker and environmental safety. These reports were in response to an explosion in 2005 at an oil refinery in Texas City, in the United States, which killed 15 people and injured more than 180, but the reports also referred to pipeline leaks in Alaska as well as other serious safety lapses throughout BP's global operations. The Texas City explosion was the worst but not the first major incident at a BP facility, and the revelations in the reports severely damaged the credibility the so-called super-major oil company had earned over the last decade. The job of restoring investor and stakeholder confidence as well as the firm's reputation fell to the BP board and its star group chief executive, Lord John Browne. The B case, product 908M03, examines the role played by the board with respect to the personal integrity of Lord Browne. The teaching objectives are to introduce students to examining the role of the board with respect to risk management as well as its social responsibilities to various stakeholders.

The case series illustrates the role of performance measurement and analytics in translating TD-Canada Trust's service model of "comfortable banking" into operational terms. In 2000, in a banking market where consumers and regulators were typically hostile to mergers and acquisitions, Canada's fifth largest commercial bank Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD Bank) undertook a merger with a relatively small trust company, Canada Trust, which was known for exceptional customer service. To assuage the concerns of regulators, consumer groups, and newly acquired customers, TD Bank made several public pronouncements promising to maintain Canada Trust's high customer service standards and to deliver a "comfortable banking" experience. Chris Armstrong, executive vice president and chief marketing officer, was now faced with the task of defining the comfortable banking model and consistently delivering on these promises. Armstrong and his team undertake a systematic analysis of the drivers of customer satisfaction and branch network profitability and, based on the results, must decide how to change TD-Canada Trust's branch compensation and performance reporting systems to consistently, and profitably, deliver a "comfortable banking" experience.

This industry note examines the oil and gas industry. The note first provides background information on industry financial performance, the role of OPEC, and the problems oil-producing nations have had in capitalizing on their resource wealth (i.e., the resource curse). The note then summarizes the major competitors among the integrated oil companies (IOCs), national oil companies (NOCs), and independents. The note describes the major business segments, including exploration and production, refining and marketing, natural gas, and petrochemicals. The note concludes with a discussion of industry evolution.

A retail-furniture company that abandoned the standard retail-industry business model, disavowed debt and equity-growth financing, and embraced a unique multiple-stakeholder model that valued quality and relationships ahead of the bottom line while producing stellar financial results achieves contrarian success. Its culture supported an energized, positive growth environment for its employees that fostered high employee engagement and, in turn, high customer engagement. Now the founder was confronting his biggest challenge: how to institutionalize the unusual business model, culture, and employee environment he has built. His primary objective is to preserve and protect his "relationship" business model, which is the heart and soul of his business's success.

This case explores management's challenge of how to best use a $10 million contribution to make the greatest impact for the poor. Acumen Fund is global philanthropic venture capital fund that seeks to prove that small amounts of philanthropic capital, combined with large doses of business acumen, can build thriving enterprises that serve vast numbers of the poor at the base of the pyramid. In recent years, the organization has expanded its work into talent building and knowledge creation. Students learn the different roles intermediary organizations like Acumen Fund play in facilitating the development of successful BoP ventures and why are these efforts needed.