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Coal is looking better as an energy source, says Amy Salzhauer of Ignition Ventures.

Despite the much-ballyhooed increase in outsourcing, most companies are in do-it-yourself mode for the bulk of their processes, in large part because there's no way to compare outside organizations' capabilities with those of internal functions. Given the lack of comparability, it's almost surprising that anyone outsources today. But it's not surprising that cost is by far companies' primary criterion for evaluating outsourcers or that many companies are dissatisfied with their outsourcing relationships. A new world is coming, says the author, and it will lead to dramatic changes in the shape and structure of corporations. A broad set of process standards will soon make it easy to determine whether a business capability can be improved by outsourcing it. Such standards will also help businesses compare service providers and evaluate the costs vs. the benefits of outsourcing. Eventually these costs and benefits will be so visible to buyers that outsourced processes will become a commodity, and prices will drop significantly. The low costs and low risk of outsourcing will accelerate the flow of jobs offshore, force companies to reassess their strategies, and change the basis of competition. The speed with which some businesses have already adopted process standards suggests that many previously unscrutinized areas are ripe for change. In the field of technology, for instance, the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute has developed a global standard for software development processes, called the Capability Maturity Model. For companies that don't have process standards in place, it makes sense for them to create standards by working with customers, competitors, software providers, businesses that processes may be outsourced to, and objective researchers and standard-setters. Setting standards is likely to lead to the improvement of both internal and outsourced processes.

Describes the reorganization of drug discovery at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) following the formation of GSK from the merger of Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham. This reorganization placed nearly 2,000 research scientists into six centers of excellence in drug discovery (CEDD). Each CEDD focused on a small set of therapeutic areas and possessed decision rights over the progression of pharmaceutical compounds through the early stages of development. Describes the proposed structure for the CEDDs and their relationship to remaining centralized departments within GSK's R&D organization. Addresses issues about the benefits of focus vs. diversification in R&D, the role of decentralized vs. coordinated decision making, and the importance of alignment between the structural and infrastructural (e.g., performance incentives) aspects of an operating model. Using the empirical context of mergers in the pharmaceutical industry, the case allows students to build broader insights about the interaction between organizational form and operating performance.

Supplements the (A) case.

Many companies are now good at managing costs and wringing out manufacturing efficiencies. The TQM movement and the disciplines of Six Sigma have seen to that. But the discipline so often brought to the cost side of the business equation is found far less commonly on the revenue side. The authors describe how a global manufacturer of industrial equipment, which they call Acme Inc., recently applied Six Sigma to one major revenue-related activity: the price-setting process. It seemed to Acme's executives that pricing closely resembled many manufacturing processes. So, with the help of a Six Sigma black belt from manufacturing, a manager from Acme's pricing division recruited a team to carry out the five Six Sigma steps: Define what constitutes a defect. At Acme, a defect was an item sold at an unauthorized price. Gather data and prepare it for analysis. That involved mapping out the existing pricing-agreement process. Analyze the data. The team identified the ways in which people failed to carry out or assert effective control at each stage. Recommend modifications to the existing process. The team sought to decrease the number of unapproved prices without creating an onerous approval apparatus. Create controls. This step enabled Acme to sustain and extend the improvements in its pricing procedures. As a result of the changes, Acme earned $6 million in additional revenue on one product line alone in the six months following implementation--money that went straight to the bottom line. At the same time, the company removed much of the organizational friction that had long bedeviled its pricing process. Other companies can benefit from Acme's experience as they look for ways to exercise price control without alienating customers.

A junior executive is given the task of calculating a benchmark common in the ship building industry - cost per compensated gross ton. Although raw data is available for its components, the executive must formulate relationships between the data to determine the benchmark. The case is designed to provide: 1) an introduction to the construction and use of benchmarks in quality management; 2) practice in conceptualizing a problem and designing a basic spreadsheet model to solve the problem. The modeling procedure uses an influence diagram as the basis for constructing the spreadsheet model, this spreadsheet model is available, product 7B05D011.

A junior executive is given the task of calculating a benchmark common in the ship building industry - cost per compensated gross ton. Although raw data is available for its components, the executive must formulate relationships between the data to determine the benchmark. The case is designed to provide: 1) an introduction to the construction and use of benchmarks in quality management; 2) practice in conceptualizing a problem and designing a basic spreadsheet model to solve the problem. The modeling procedure uses an influence diagram as the basis for constructing the spreadsheet model, this spreadsheet model is available, product 7B05D011.

Boeing dominated the commercial airline manufacturing business since bringing out the first commercial airline jet airliner. But in 2005, it delivered fewer new planes than its fast-moving competitor, Airbus. Boeing responded by transforming its manufacturing business and introducing the first "all-composite" commercial airplane: the 787 (the Dreamliner). In addition to being a revolutionary new commercial airliner, the 787 attempts to change the large "spoke-and-hubs" airport operation to nonstop travel between many new "city-pairs" worldwide.

Spreadsheet supplement to case 305101.

Exel plc is a global third-party logistics provider, serving clients such as Home Depot, Dell, Unilever, and Marks & Spencer. Describes the range of activities Exel performs for its clients and the capabilities the company has developed. Exel traditionally focused on freight management and contract logistics services and is now considering providing supply chain planning services. Management believes that there is tremendous potential in combining supply chain planning with supply chain execution. However, there are risks involved in entering the new business. Describes the decision in the context of Exel's two-decade relationship with Haus Mart, a leading retailer of home textiles, housewares, and home accessories in Germany.

Supplements the (A) case.

Describes the organization and operations of the Handleman Co., an intermediary in the music industry that buys recorded music and resells it to mass retailers such as Wal-Mart. The company provides distribution, inventory management, retail merchandising, and category management to its retail customers. It differentiates itself by keeping track of trends in the music industry and ensuring that the trends in music popularity translate to the appropriate assortments in each retail store. Recounts the changes that Handleman has made in organizational structure, processes, and system to support its business. Describes the challenges facing the president of the entertainment division in light of increasing product proliferation, price pressure, the need for growth, and the advent of online music.

Evergreen Investments has had a troubled history with its customer relationship management (CRM) system. Sales agents feel that they derive no value from it and that it is a tax on their jobs. Evergreen is investigating whether it can improve CRM by making its data available wirelessly to Blackberry devices. These devices would also provide mobile phone and e-mail capabilities.

Covers the phenomenon of outsourcing jobs from the United States. Reviews the evolution of Mexico's Maquiladoras, manufacturing special economic areas in China, and information technology and service-sourcing in India. Also reviews exports/imports, exchange rates, wages, and jobs. Considers major outsourcer General Electric's moves to these countries and its plans. Compares Mexico and China, and India and China, asking what the United States and GE should be doing.

Herb Kelleher, executive chairman of Southwest Airlines, writes to Elliott Weiss, operations professor at the Darden School. Kelleher responds thoughtfully and in detail to two Darden cases about the experiences a Darden student had while flying on Southwest Airlines and JetBlue Airways.

Examines the decision of a hedge fund manager who is considering investing in a retail stock. The protagonist is concerned about the retailer's inventory level. Explores the relationship between the retailer's inventory and future earnings--and, hence, the relationship between inventory level and stock price.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. In an attempt to increase both efficiency and service quality, more and more companies are outsourcing to third-party suppliers some key business processes, such as human resources, information technology, and procurement. The universe of potential suppliers is diverse and growing, made up of locally based specialists, offshore providers with comparatively low labor costs, and global suppliers who are able to apply sophisticated management techniques and technology. The challenge for clients is to understand their own requirements and to identify providers whose capabilities and objectives are best aligned with their particular needs. Draws on extensive research to identify three potentially critical areas of supplier competency: delivery competency, transformation competency, and relationship competency. By benchmarking supplier capabilities against its strategic and operational intent, a company can work to establish relationships that support its business objectives.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Information technology is undergoing an inexorable shift from being an asset that companies own to being a service that they purchase from utility providers. Three technological advances are enabling this change: virtualization, grid computing, and Web services. Virtualization erases the differences between proprietary computing platforms, enabling applications designed to run on one operating system to be deployed elsewhere. Grid computing allows large numbers of hardware components, such as servers or disk drives, to effectively act as a single device, pooling their capacity and allocating it automatically to different jobs. Web services standardize the interfaces between applications, turning them into modules that can be assembled and disassembled easily. The resulting industry will likely have three major components. At the center will be the IT utilities themselves--big companies that will maintain core computing resources in central plants and distribute them to end users. Serving the utilities will be a diverse array of component suppliers--the makers of computers, storage units, networking gear, operating and utility software, and applications. And finally, large network operators will maintain the ultra-high-capacity data communication lines needed for the system to work. IT's shift from an in-house capital asset to a centralized utility service will overturn strategic and operating assumptions, alter industrial economics, upset markets, and pose daunting challenges to every user and vendor.

Femtosecond lasers will revolutionize processes in a variety of industries.

In 2002, Esteban Garriga, customer service director at Henkel Iberica, questions whether Collaborative Planning, Forecasting, and Replenishment (CPFR) would help manage retail promotions and limit their impact on the stock-outs and obsolete inventory. Describes the situation facing Henkel Iberica, the Spanish subsidiary of the German consumer products company Henkel KgaA, with respect to the management of retail promotions. The increasing number of promotions and the complexity of the company portfolio seriously taxed Henkel Iberica's sales, production, and distribution systems. Many in the organization believed the company should abandon or cut back promotions and adopt an everyday low pricing strategy. Garriga believes the solution to be in CPFR. Describes Henkel Iberica's operations and provides the necessary background to discuss whether CPFR is the adequate solution for its problems.