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For the first time, the Commonwealth Blood Transfusion Service (CBTS) has to determine product costs for the output of its plasma fractionation center. The motivation for determining product costs is political in nature. Therefore, the CBTS has to find a way to report individual product costs despite the fact that they are joint products. Because of the political motivation, CBTS executives cannot argue that there is no meaningful way to allocate joint costs to products. The case provides students with an opportunity to identify several allocation procedures for determining joint costs and then use those procedures to determine product costs.

Examines the experiences of being a "recipient" of change and how to help individuals cope with change. The first part describes how people typically respond to changes likening it to a loss experience. The second part describes what organizations can do to help individuals through difficult transitions, while the third part identifies what individuals can do for themselves. Finally, raises the challenges for individuals to deal with multiple and continuous change.

Introduces the concept of cost variances. Looking at a bicycle manufacturer with one product and three departments, the case presents budgeted and actual data for material, labor, and overhead.

Packard Electric is the division of General Motors (GM) that does all of the electrical wiring and cabling for GM automobiles. They developed a new approach for passing the cables through the firewall between the engine and passenger compartments. The new technology called the RIM (Reaction Injection Molded) grommet, was supported heavily by the product development group because it was simpler to design and improved the leak seat. Process development was against using it because it cost more, complicated the manufacturing process, and provided only minor improvements in leak resistance. The students must analyze the risk in continuing with the project, the potential benefits from product simplification and the potential benefits from improving the leak resistance. The students must also review the product development process to determine conflicts before they reach a crisis.

Designed to examine the process of project management during the development cycle of a luxury condominium building, exploring the issue of how the design, development strategy, project organization, and project personnel are interrelated. More specifically, looks at how these factors shape the day-to-day operations of a development and how they affect the formal and informal mechanisms that a project manager has at his or her disposal. Students are asked to design floor plans for a portion of one floor to point up the importance of the difficulties in creating workable and saleable units.

Spreadsheet Supplement for case 191084

John Akers, IBM's chairman, must confront how to transform a $60 billion, full line, global computer company that is the leader in every market it serves, yet losing share across the board. The case explores senior management's perspective on the process of organization change.

An introduction to sampling and statistical inference that covers the main concepts (confidence intervals, tests of statistical significance, choice of sample size) that are needed in making inferences about a population mean or percent. Includes discussion of problems of sampling in the real world where response bias and nonrepresentativeness violate the principles on which statistical inference is based.

Examines the important economic considerations affecting a firm's price-quantity decision for a product. Begins with a discussion of the appropriate decision criterion. Next, it motivates the concept of a demand curve for a product and defines demand elasticity. Marginal analysis is used to establish the following necessary condition for optimal price and quantity: marginal revenue must equal marginal cost. Price-quantity determination in the presence of a resource constraint and competition is also discussed.

An exercise with data that allows a discussion of regression analysis as a tool for forecasting and understanding structure.

Describes the development of a new word processing software package, Word for Windows. The major focus is how the development process should be improved to reduce schedule slips and cost overruns. Some of the issues raised are: the use of schedules in managing development projects, cross-functional communications, program management, and differences between software and hardware development.

Faced with changing markets and tougher competition, more companies realize that they must transform how they function. Although senior managers understand the necessity of change, they often misunderstand what it takes to bring it about. They assume that corporate renewal is the product of companywide change programs--and that to transform employee behavior, they must alter a company's formal structure. Change programs are, in fact, the greatest obstacles to successful revitalization, and formal structure is the last thing a company should change, not the first.

The management at Trail Manufacturing was so excited about installing new flexible machining equipment in their factory that they neglected to guage the impact it would have on the workers who actually ran the machines. Mike Trail, the company's owner and president, is torn between his chief engineer who encourages radical changes, and his machinists who believe the company is making a huge mistake. Four experts in operations management comment on the choices Trail must consider.

Products with integrity perform superbly, provide good value, and satisfy customer's expectations in every respect, including such intangibles as their look and feel. The most successful development organizations appoint a "heavyweight" product manager to guide the creation of a strong product concept. This person ensures that a product concept both satisfies potential customers' wants and needs and is completely embodied in a product's details.

Companies are creating new hybrid marketing systems that promise to become the dominant marketing design. These systems offer greater coverage and reduced costs, but they are also hard to manage. Managers can make the task easier with a "hybrid grid," a map that illustrates the combination of channels and tasks that will optimize cost and coverage. Another tool, a marketing and sales productivity (MSP) system, can help managers create customized channels and service for specific customer segments.

John S. Reed, chairman and CEO of Citicorp, has a clear ambition: to create the world's first truly global financial institution. Citicorp's scale may make it the only U.S. bank with the potential to do this. Still, its precarious balance sheet constrains flexibility and growth. Reed proposes a radical restructuring of international banking: "Imagine a scenario in which 10 or 12 international banks, much like the 5 or 6 giant oil companies, share the capital and risk associated with different parts of the business."

In the late 1970s, the author read everything he could about Japanese business. But only by working for Japanese companies has he been able to learn about day-to-day management. In the past 11 years, first at Toshiba's U.S. computer business and then at Seiko Instruments USA, he has learned firsthand more than ten Japanese management techniques.

According to a survey the author conducted for the International Women's Forum, women managers are succeeding by drawing on what is unique to their experience as women. Because they have historically been expected to play a supportive and cooperative role, women have learned how to manage effectively without relying on their control of resources and power to motivate others. They tend to be more interactive in their leadership than men.

Small and midsize companies make up 99% of Japanese industry, and are the real foundation of the Japanese economy. The high-quality goods that come bearing a famous maker's name are seldom the product of that company's factory -- in fact, small companies usually designed, assembled, packaged, and shipped it. These subcontractors are like serfs in a highly structured feudal system. The big companies are the daimyo -- feudal overlords who control the fates of their subjects.