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It's panic time at Blackheath Manufacturing. Profits have been declining, so the owner's son comes to the rescue to run the company. He asks a consultant to determine what's wrong. And the consultant has specific answers: The company's pricing guidelines are all wrong, there needs to be a budgeting system to reverse the downward slide in profits, and a former employee should be rehired. This case provides students with the data for constructing a production and raw-materials budget, flexible-expense budget, income statement, balance sheet, and cash budget. See also "Blackheath Manufacturing Company" (UV1728).

Lee High, the newly hired cost accountant at Blackheath Manufacturing Company, computes the variable cost and the fixed cost per unit on a weekly volume of 500 units of the Great Heath. He uses this information to develop some pricing guidelines. His boss, Charlton Blackheath, endorses the guidelines and adds a feature: a higher commission on sales at a higher price. While both High and Blackheath are away, the file clerk, Adelaide Ladywell, accepts an order below the guidelines and is fired. Students are asked to develop an appropriate set of decision rules for pricing Great Heath and to evaluate Ladywell's decision. See also "Blackheath Manufacturing Company-Revisited" (UV1729).

Environmental scanning systems are useless in the face of strategic inflection points--the dangerous quantum changes in competitive environments. Top managers and strategic planners lack the will and the intuition, respectively, to deal with those points the system does detect. More often than not, however, the system will simply fail to see them at all. To do so requires a synthesis that can be provided only by line managers who have both the right intuitions, by virtue of day-to-day contact with the real world, and access to unfiltered information, by virtue of their lowly station in the corporate hierarchy.

BriLux develops early-stage high-speed data networking equipment. In recent month, BriLux customers have hinted that combining ARTRAN, the company's flagship optical data service platform, with a new fiber optic transportation product (tentatively referred to as FOT-320) would increase the market appeal of the company's portfolio. The research and development director must decide whether to support the development of this new product.

Eli Lilly and Company is a leading U.S. pharmaceutical company. The new president of intercontinental operations is re-evaluating all of the company's divisions, including the joint venture with Ranbaxy Laboratories Limited, one of India's largest pharmaceutical companies. This joint venture has run smoothly for a number of years despite their differences in focus, but recently Ranbaxy was experiencing cash flow difficulties due to its network of international sales. In addition, the Indian government was changing regulations for businesses in India, and joining the World Trade Organization would have an effect on India's chemical and drug regulations. The president must determine if this international joint venture still fits Eli Lilly's strategic objectives.

Bombardier Transportation, one of the world's largest manufacturers of passenger rail cars, has successfully negotiated the purchase of Adtranz, a large European manufacturer of rail equipment. The newly appointed chief executive officer has been brought in to manage the acquisition. The new CEO faces many challenges including decisions about the pace of integration, location of headquarters, organization structure, personnel retention and personal management style. Students may use this case to discuss post-acquisition strategy and how fast companies should move to integrate acquisitions.

Jinjian Garment Factory is a large clothing manufacturer based in Shenzhen with distribution to Hong Kong and overseas. Although Shenzhen had become one of the most advanced garment manufacturing centres in the world, managers in this industry still had few effective ways of dealing with the collective and deliberate slow pace of work by the employees, of motivating workers, and of resolving the problem between seasonal production requirements and retention of skilled workers. However, the owner and managing director of the company must determine the reasons behind the deliberately slow pace of the workers, the pros and cons of the piecework system and the methods he could adopt to motivate the workers effectively.

Cambridge Laboratories is essentially a fee-for-service provider of laboratory tests. It spends less than 0.5 per cent of revenues on research and development and holds relatively few patents for a biotech company. It now has an opportunity to invest $5 million to establish a joint venture with an Australian proteomics company that operates on a drug discovery (royalty) model. The founder of this company believed that his technology could eventually result in the discovery of new drugs that would generate significant royalties. While the proteomics firm has superb technology, some of the intellectual leaders in the field on its staff, and partnerships with some impressive companies, its technology is yet unproven. Cambridge Labs is also concerned that its existing relationships with big pharmaceutical companies could be jeopardized if it begins to take an intellectual property position in proteomics. In addition, the Australian company consists primarily of PhDs in molecular biology, while Cambridge Labs is dominated by business executives whose primary focus is generating strong financial returns for shareholders. The cultural differences between an Australian science-oriented laboratory and a publicly traded American outsourcing company become apparent during the negotiation phase of the joint venture proposal. Students are asked to evaluate the joint venture and consider whether the cultural and strategic differences can be reconciled.

Vancity Credit Union is one of the largest credit unions in Canada with $9 billion in assets and 300,000 members. The company's success was based on three key elements: member experience, employee experience and community leadership. With the pressure of increased competition from financial institutions and changing market characteristics, the chief executive officer must review the corporate strategy and resources to determine how the company can stay competitive and further increase its members and services.

Breeden Electronics USA is a start-up division of a German company. It plans to produce two products, both electronic signaling devices. Herman Klein, the division president, has asked his controller, Marlene Baer, to compute several breakeven sales figures as they assess the sales level that is necessary to meet the profit target established by the parent company. Baer must conduct several breakeven analyses and consider the impact on profit if production exceeds sales. This is the first in a series of three cases that can be used to explore the evolution of cost systems. The main issues of the three cases are as follows: in the A case, the company uses a traditional costing system. The main questions relate to breakeven analysis and the effect of inventory buildup on profit. The B case (UV1732) introduces the definition of activities, costing those activities, and computing product cost based on their use of the activities. The revised product costs are not dramatically different, but analyzing what causes the differences is important to discovering where ABC can provide valuable information. The C case (UV1734) takes place after the end of the year, when profits have been reduced by the need to take care of a growing and increasingly complex packing and shipping activity. The controller defines a new activity (order handling), computes the cost per order, and begins to revise the data on product profitability and to develop new data on customer profitability. Having discovered the high cost of handling each order, the controller now has good reason to work on activity-based management: making that process more efficient, and perhaps more customer friendly. The three cases can be used in three classes, or the A and B cases together in one class and the C case in a second class.

Describes the 16-day final mission of the space shuttle Columbia in January 2003 in which seven astronauts died. Includes background on NASA and the creation of the human space flight program, including the 1970 Apollo 13 crisis and 1986 Challenger disaster. Examines NASA's organizational culture, leadership, and the influences on the investigation of and response to foam shedding from the external fuel tank during shuttle launch.

A venture capitalist faces a situation in which a struggling portfolio company has found a promising vice president of sales through a recruitment agency. The candidate would be an excellent fit for another one of the investor's companies--one that is doing much better. Yet, that firm has not embarked on a formal search.

Supplements the (A) case.

This case series focuses students on the boom-and-bust behaviors in the Northern Forest sawmill industry. Stakeholders, from landowners to sawmill owners to government officials to environmentalists, all want to make sure that the overall demand for saw logs, as driven by sawmill capacity, does not exceed the rate at which the trees are growing. They do not want sawmill demand to "overshoot" the productive capacity of the forest resource, a classic problem in renewable-resource economies that the region had experienced approximately a century earlier. Students are called upon to use system-thinking skills (analysis of reference modes of behaviors, causal-loop mapping, and stock-flow mapping) in creating their causal hypotheses of the underlying system structure. Students are asked to design system-structure policies to help sustain both the industry and the natural resources of the region. The B case describes the views of the trade group for sawmills and veneer mills of the Northern Forest.

This case series focuses students on the boom-and-bust behaviors in the Northern Forest sawmill industry. Stakeholders, from landowners to sawmill owners to government officials to environmentalists, all want to make sure that the overall demand for saw logs, as driven by sawmill capacity, does not exceed the rate at which the trees are growing. They do not want sawmill demand to "overshoot" the productive capacity of the forest resource, a classic problem in renewable-resource economies that the region had experienced approximately a century earlier. Students are called upon to use system-thinking skills (analysis of reference modes of behaviors, causal-loop mapping, and stock-flow mapping) in creating their causal hypotheses of the underlying system structure. Students are asked to design system-structure policies to help sustain both the industry and the natural resources of the region. The C case describes the roles and views of environmental activists and nonprofit organizations of the Northern Forest. You, the student, advocate for the health of the forest ecosystems, which include the plants, animals, soil, air, and water. You also care about the connections between people and the forest (e.g., recreational opportunities, vital local forest-connected communities).

This case describes the roles and views of represent the people who own forested land in the Northern Forest. The Northern Forest (A)-(E) case series focuses students on the boom and bust behaviors in the Northern Forest sawmill industry. Stakeholders from landowners to sawmill owners to government officials to environmentalists all wanted to make sure that the overall demand for saw logs, as driven by sawmill capacity, did not exceed the rate at which the trees were growing. They did not want sawmill demand to "overshoot" the productive capacity of the forest resource, a classic problem in renewable resource economies that the region had experienced approximately a century earlier. Students are called upon to use systems thinking skills (analysis of reference modes of behaviors, causal loop mapping and stock flow mapping) in creating their causal hypotheses of the underlying systems structure. Students are asked to design system structure policies to help sustain both the industry and the natural resources of the region.

This case describes the roles and views of state foresters of the four Northern Forest states-Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York. They are the top state government officials in charge of forested lands, the associated ecosystems, and the forest projects' industry. The Northern Forest (A)-(E) case series focuses students on the boom and bust behaviors in the Northern Forest sawmill industry. Stakeholders from landowners to sawmill owners to government officials to environmentalists all wanted to make sure that the overall demand for saw logs, as driven by sawmill capacity, did not exceed the rate at which the trees were growing. They did not want sawmill demand to "overshoot" the productive capacity of the forest resource, a classic problem in renewable resource economies that the region had experienced approximately a century earlier. Students are called upon to use systems thinking skills (analysis of reference modes of behaviors, causal loop mapping and stock flow mapping) in creating their causal hypotheses of the underlying systems structure. Students are asked to design system structure policies to help sustain both the industry and the natural resources of the region.

Palliser is Canada's second-largest furniture company. The company has production facilities in Canada, Mexico and Indonesia, and has experimented with cutting and sewing leather in China. The company is looking at further expanding the relationship with China. Ever since Palliser set up a plant in Mexico, the company has faced increasing competitive pressure from Asia, especially from China. The president of Palliser must decide what form this relationship should follow. Should it be an investment, either wholly or partly owned, or should it be through subcontracting?

Kobe Steel Ltd. started as a large manufacturer of steel products and has diversified into other sectors including iron, aluminum and copper products, engineering, machinery and electronic information. Headquartered in Japan, it established overseas laboratories that were given technology-based missions to assist with the diversification away from the company's core business. One such laboratory, the Electronic Materials Center (EMC) located in North Carolina, evolved from a research oriented focus to a product development focus. The center's major products were expected to launch EMC in a profitable business venture and help spear head Kobe Steel's diversification effort. However, the organization context and economic environment in which Kobe Steel was attempting this were extremely complex. This included multicultural issues, emerging markets, technologies new to the company and even natural disaster. The supplement Kobe Steel USA, Electronic Materials Center: The Commercialization of New Technologies (B), product 9B04M018 looks at the issues faced in a consulting situation.

Audible Inc. is one of the largest providers of audio content, such as books, magazines and newspapers. The company has a large library of hours of content, strong alliances with partners including Microsoft, Amazon and Random House, and a growing customer base, but the company has lost money since it began. The chief executive officer and chief financial officer must decide how to raise funds to keep the company going, while maintaining its partner and customer relationships.