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Spreadsheet Supplement for Case W27019

Buckeye Chiller Systems and International Steel Corporation formed MicroFin Incorporated in 2017, in South Carolina, United States, as a joint venture to produce tubing for industrial chillers. After four years of losses, the chief executive officer of Buckeye had lost patience with the joint venture. He gave his chief operating officer until the end of March 2021 (less than three weeks) to turn around MicroFin or dissolve the partnership. With no chance of making money in the short term, the chief operating officer focused on three options for terminating the joint venture. Time was running out, and something needed to change.

The Estée Lauder Companies (ELC) is a leading manufacturer and marketer of prestige skincare, makeup, fragrance, and haircare products with annual sales of over $14 billion in 2020. ELC had a long-standing commitment to "High Touch" customer service, inviting and tracking all feedback from consumers. ELC had recently moved from a manual to an automated tracking platform, positioning the company to more efficiently handle customer feedback. This platform and the data it aggregated was put to the test in August 2020 when the Consumer Care Analytics & Insights Group noticed an uptick in contact volume largely generated from China. The team also noticed that the increase was driven almost exclusively by complaints. The spike was especially cause for concern given that ELC had a 100% return policy with no questions asked, so customer complaints often led to returns and lost revenue. In this case, students are asked to consider potential root causes of the increased online customer complaints-and based on their hypotheses, what type of analysis and potential interventions they would recommend.

How can companies develop and maintain global supply chain networks that are robust - that is, capable of maintaining an uninterrupted flow of goods and materials - when confronted with a geographically spreading disruption that could cause the shutdown of multiple suppliers at once? To answer this question, this article combines an empirical analysis of supply chain networks of three global automotive manufacturers with computational experiments. The results reveal that even when a small fraction of buyers adopt regionalizing supplier-selection practices - those in which a buyer chooses geographically proximate suppliers, whether to the buyer or its current suppliers - the supply chain network becomes more robust.

Before the pandemic, employers rarely offered remote work as an accommodation except in cases of documented, legally protected disabilities. But the pandemic-era experiment of working from home effectively leveled the playing field for employees for whom coming to a physical office presented hardships. The authors describe considerations for employers as they navigate a future in which work location isn't dictated by a pandemic.

Reframing your B2B company as a business-for-business company can increase revenues, customer retention, and employee morale. The authors describe how Luker Chocolate of Colombia made this strategic shift and has grown by helping its customers succeed.

The social enterprise Apni Shala Foundation (ASF) provided social and emotional learning programs to disadvantaged communities in Mumbai, India. Since its founding in 2013, ASF had engaged with more than 16,000 students. Before February 2020, ASF was directly engaged with more than 4,600 students, 1,000 parents, and more than 500 teachers at 35 government schools and non-profit organizations. However, on March 31, 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced ASF to shut its office and discontinue operations, and its mission of equipping children, educators, and parents with skills to support improved mental well-being stopped abruptly. Amrita Nair, the co-founder of ASF now faced a dilemma regarding resuming the foundation's social and emotional learning programs: If ASF did continue, which categories should it choose to serve, and why? How could it transform its offerings and operations without compromising much on the quality of programs?

Driven by a passion to develop his own brand, Sandeep Yadav started Rock Pharmacy in 2014 in a rented area of 700 square feet and with seed capital of US$6,665. His primary customers were patients who required medication regularly for conditions including cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and kidney issues, and people who worked for companies in the local area. The venture dealt mainly in patented medication. However, over 2018-2020, there had been a dramatic decrease in sales and profits due to the rise of e-pharmacies and organized pharma, and the business was struggling to meet its operating expenses. Considering the options available to save his business, Yadav had to decide: should he give up his brand and collaborate with online/organized pharma players, or should he compete with them?

On March 23, 2021, Vineet Sharma, the sole owner of MedStar Polymers, India, a medical-grade latex glove manufacturing company, was considering the dilemma of how to scale up production to fulfill an unprecedented order during COVID-19. With demand for protective equipment outstripping global supply during the pandemic, an exceptional business growth and expansion opportunity for glove manufacturers had emerged. Several manufacturers had expanded production by adding new production lines. On the surface, a production ramp-up looked as simple as increasing inputs: raw material, labour, machinery, equipment, and cash. However, a decision to rapidly increase production could create risk and almost destroy a business-especially when constraints such as raw material unavailability, transport and travel restrictions, logistical problems, and state- and area-wide lockdowns started impacting the production process. Sharma had to decide how to increase output while also dealing with disruptions such as a shortage of labour and concerns about the use of natural latex rubber. Was now the right time to add a new production line? Should he switch to making nitrile gloves? He needed to make decisions quickly, as the current high demand would likely not last.

ShakeeBee Honey Inc. was a relatively small producer of pure honey and beeswax and provider of pollination services located in central Newfoundland, Canada. The company needed to consider further expansion beyond the facility modernization it undertook in 2018; this expansion would involve acquiring additional land and attracting key personnel. In March 2020, the owner reached out to his accountant for assistance with a variety of accounting-related matters. The company needed an analysis of its current operations, including profitability by product/service line offered. It also needed an assessment of its application for a government pollination grant and a declaration in support of this application, and assistance in evaluating tax implications of some upcoming decisions.

Anna Bender, VP of product at Workaround, a large human resources (HR) software firm, had just been presented with a number of different recommendations from her employees on how to integrate the functionality and data from a recently acquired software company that had a leading chat app into Workaround's offerings. Although she was impressed by many of the suggestions, Bender was also ethically conflicted about some of them. The business opportunities and ethical implications of each of the three proposals weighed on Bender's mind as she prepared to meet with the senior leadership team the next day. Before doing so, however, she had to identify the potential ethical issues with each suggestion and analyze ways they might be minimized, particularly with regard to privacy and potential antitrust concerns. The worst possible outcome would be getting dragged up in front of Congress. Yet, more broadly, she wanted her decision to reflect the core values of Workaround's business and her own personal values.

The COVID-19 pandemic shocked the global economy, laying bare the coordination challenges and vulnerabilities of global value chains (GVCs) across sectors. Governments, consumers, and firms alike have called for greater GVC resilience to ensure critical products are delivered to the right place, at the right time, and in the right condition. This article investigates whether GVC reconfiguration through the adoption of redistributed manufacturing (RDM) in local production can deliver greater resilience against unexpected, disruptive global events. It proposes actionable steps for managers to ensure more resilient GVCs in the face of global shocks.

Supplement to case 422045.

In November 2021, US Foods CEO Pietro Satriano must decide his company's trajectory following the COVID-19 pandemic. US Foods suffered due to business closures and social distancing during the height of the pandemic. While the situation improved following the return of indoor dining and in-person learning, an industry-wide shortage of truck drivers and warehouse selectors threatened to dampen its post-pandemic recovery. The US Foods team must determine the appropriate strategy for attracting and retaining new drivers and selectors. Meanwhile, the company planned to build additional locations for CHEF'STORE, its cash-and-carry warehouse brand, which promised to increase its geographic footprint and product offerings. Satriano must decide how to support the CHEF'STORE expansion in light of the foodservice distribution industry's continued supply chain challenges.

Agora was a civic technology (civic tech) startup founded by Elsa Sze, who wanted to enhance the connection between political officials and their constituents by facilitating virtual "town halls," making underrepresented voices heard and benefiting elected and appointed leaders who often struggled to collect meaningful feedback. Despite success in startup accelerator programs, challenges and complexities with government sales cycles led Sze to pivot the company multiple times, until she was selling customer service software to corporations and pondering whether she still wanted to build and sell Agora. A short financial runway meant she had to quickly decide where to invest her energy.

This is the conclusion to Agora (A), where founder Elsa Sze decides if she wants to continue investing energy in her civic technology startup. Agora was a civic technology (civic tech) startup founded by Elsa Sze, who wanted to enhance the connection between political officials and their constituents by facilitating virtual "town halls," making underrepresented voices heard and benefiting elected and appointed leaders who often struggled to collect meaningful feedback. Despite success in startup accelerator programs, challenges and complexities with government sales cycles led Sze to pivot the company multiple times, until she was selling customer service software to corporations and pondering whether she still wanted to build and sell Agora. A short financial runway meant she had to quickly decide where to invest her energy.

In 2021, the car manufacturer National Electric Vehicle Sweden (NEVS) faced the challenge of securing funding from its investor to launch an innovative mobility solution based on fleets of shared autonomous driving (AD) cars. The system was complex as it required the development of several interconnected components: from AD cars to a system to coordinate the vehicles with the city's digital and physical infrastructure. Furthermore, AD cars were still in a testing phase. The project was made even more complicated by NEVS' decision to target different customers: from companies which could use PONS as part of a leasing service or to transport goods, to municipalities willing to complement their public transportation services, or private citizens which could use it to commute or go shopping. NEVS felt the urge to launch the system. But was NEVS ready?

Spreadsheet supplement for case 222022.

Nicolas Dupont, the owner of Chateau de Montana, a struggling (and old) boutique hotel in Crans-Montana Ski Resort, Switzerland, wished to renovate and reposition his family-owned hotel to target higher room rates. Dupont commissioned Olga Mitireva and Yulia Belopilskaya as consultants to assess the proposition. The consultants had to extract cues for the room rate of the repositioned hotel from comparable hotels. However, the room rates varied significantly across similar hotels due to their differing characteristics and locations. It was a cognitive challenge to read the patterns from a few comparable hotels. They collected the data of 200 hotels from similar locations and simulated room prices using hedonic regression models.