個案總覽

Quinte MRI is a small service provider of medical diagnostic technologies. After just six weeks in operation at a medical centre, the company developed an extensive waiting list, and physicians began referring patients to competing facilities. Quinte MRI's business development coordinators must provide recommendations and an action plan to deal with this process and productivity problem in a setting with extreme variability.

Set during the devastating earthquakes in 2001 in El Salvador, the case narrates the process of implementing SUMA, a supply management system. It addresses the complexity of a humanitarian operation where numerous un-coordinated parties are involved in a highly politicized environment. Beyond providing managers and the public with information about the amounts of aid collected, stored and distributed, SUMA contributes to the situation with a degree of visibility and accountability essential to prevent the aid from manipulation or diversion.

This case focuses on implementing and sustaining improvements designed by a Six Sigma team working in the emergency department of an academic medical hospital. Execution details of the various phases of Six Sigma are presented in the A case (UV0339). The team's Black Belt has decided to use stakeholder-resistance analyses to help the team increase stakeholder acceptance of the process-improvement changes that have been tested via a pilot study. The B case asks students to conduct a stakeholder's resistance analysis, develop influence strategies and communication plans for addressing the project's acceptance challenges, and prepare elevator speeches for key stakeholders identified in the A case. The B case also provides an opportunity for the instructor to build on the Change Acceleration Process (CAP) and the CAP tools that were presented in the A case. See also the C case (UV3524).

This case provides the presentation slides from the Six Sigma project undertaken to decrease the patient wait time in the emergency department of an academic medical hospital. The various phases and tools of Six Sigma are demonstrated, and the project's pilot results are shown. The case also provides slides covering an overview of Six Sigma. The presentations are useful for both executives and students who are studying Six Sigma methodology. See also the A (UV0339) and B (UV3523) cases. The teaching note UV0340 is available for the (A-C) cases.

The operations manager of a custom kitchen cabinet manufacturer wants to improve the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the company's production line. He plans to purchase a computer numeric controlled router, but must decide whether to purchase a new or a used machine. He must also decide on changes to the cabinet manufacturing line to ensure that the plant's capacity will meet forecasted demand in the upcoming year.

The owners of Country Paws Boarding Inc., a large boarding facility for dogs, customarily took every opportunity to get to know each dog's likes, dislikes, behaviors and tendencies in order to minimize separation trauma. This required ongoing dialog with each dog owner and observation of each canine. The owners were always eager to chat with those boarding their dogs at Country Paws in the hope of identifying potential new services and improving existing offerings. In response to dog owner expectations for canine socialization and recreation, new offering being considered was the community playground. They must determine how this offering would fit with their current line of services and what other services were worth considering.

The operations manager of a custom kitchen cabinet manufacturer wants to improve the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the company's production line. He plans to purchase a computer numeric controlled router, but must decide whether to purchase a new or a used machine. He must also decide on changes to the cabinet manufacturing line to ensure that the plant's capacity will meet forecasted demand in the upcoming year.

General Electric launched Bridges to Excellence Diabetes Care Link, a program through which enrolled physicians receive bonuses of up to 10% of their salary for delivering quality care to diabetic patients covered by a participating employer or health plan. A day later, the Wall Street Journal labeled the program a "bribe." The case explores this accusation and the assumption that purchasers and consumers must explicitly pay for quality in heath care. Also allows evaluation of a specific program from design (e.g., financial reward structure) to implementation (e.g., parties involved). The question of scalability arises, as does the criteria by which to judge success.

Illustrates the technological and organizational challenges of breakthrough innovation. Students discuss the benefits, disadvantages, and management of various approaches to technological breakthroughs.

Spreadsheet supplement for case 604043.

For most of the last 50 years, technology knew its place. It's very different today. Technology is not only ubiquitous but has become highly intrusive as well. On the Internet, people invent imaginary identities in virtual chat rooms. Children are growing up with interactive toy animals. If we want to be sure we'll like who we've become in 50 years, we need to take a closer look at the psychological effects of current and future technologies. The smartest people in technology have already started. Universities like MIT and Caltech have been pouring millions of dollars into researching what happens when technology and humanity meet. To learn more about this research, HBR senior editor Diane L. Coutu spoke with one of the field's most distinguished scholars--Sherry Turkle, MIT's Abby Rockefeller Mauze Professor in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society and the author of Life on the Screen, which explores how the Internet is changing the way we define ourselves. In a conversation with Coutu, Turkle discusses the psychological dynamics that can develop between people and their high-tech toys, describes ways in which machines might substitute for managers, and explains how technology is redefining what it means to be human. She warns that relatively small differences in technology design can have disproportionate effects on how humans relate to technology, to one another, and to themselves.

Reprint: R0309E Despite companies' almost fanatical worship of innovation, most new products don't generate money. That's because executives don't realize that the approach they take to commercializing a new product is as important as the innovation itself. Different approaches can generate very different levels of profit. Companies tend to favor one of three different innovation approaches, each with its own investment profile, profitability pattern, risk profile, and skill requirements. Most organizations are instinctively integrators: They manage all the steps needed to take a product to market themselves. Organizations can also choose to be orchestrators: They focus on some parts of the commercialization process and depend on partners to manage the rest. And finally, companies can be licensers: They sell or license a new product or idea to another organization that handles the commercialization process. Different innovations require different approaches. Selecting the most suitable approach, the authors' research found, often yields two or three times the profits of the least optimal approach. Yet companies tend to rely only on the mode most familiar to them. Executives would do better to take several different factors into account before deciding which tack to take, including the industry they're trying to enter, the specific characteristics of the innovation, and the risks involved in taking the product to market. By doing so, companies can match the approach to the opportunity and reap the maximum profit. Choosing the wrong approach, like Polaroid did, for example, can lead to the failure of both the product and the company. Optimizing their approaches, as Whirlpool has done, helps ensure that companies' innovations make money.

IBM director of web infrastructure software, Robert Sutor, is a key leader in the arcane world of web services. In this interview, he says it's just a matter of time before companies seamlessly connect their systems and software via the Internet through all-but-invisible applications. Web services will change the way we do business.

Loctite Corporation is a large industrial adhesives company. The company has implemented the five principles of lean management on its customer service operation. A recent merger of the customer engineering service operation with the dispensing equipment operation has the vice-president of technical service and application engineering looking at applying the lean principles on the equipment operations. The company initially considered equipment a secondary product line needed only to augment its service offering in the support of the core product, industrial adhesives. In addition, most of Loctite's equipment manufacturing activities were outsourced so suppliers played a key role in lean transformation. The vice-president must prepare a plan to implement the principles of lean management while meeting the goals set out by the president of the company.

This note provides an introduction to the First Year Operations course in the Darden MBA program. The course is taught over 36 class sessions spanning two quarters. The note provides an introduction to operations management, why it is important, and what will be covered in this core course. The course is designed to provide students with a fundamental understanding of operations management and a perspective that will enable them to leverage their knowledge of operations to improve their managerial performance.

Unifine Richardson is a food manufacturer with 110 employees. The company's sole supplier of honey announced that effective immediately it was no longer able to supply Chinese honey. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency had rejected the importation of Chinese honey due to recently found traces of an antibiotic chemical. China had provided 20% of the world's honey supply. Faced with escalating prices, issues with customer preferences, and possible product recalls, the purchasing manager must determine the company's next step. Considerations include international sourcing, supply disruptions, supply chain management, and quality issues.

Formed in late 1996, Boeing Australia Ltd. (BAL) was a relatively new company and a global extension of the U.S. firm, the Boeing Co. BAL developed capabilities in the areas of space and communications, site management, and the upgrade and maintenance of military aircraft and equipment. As BAL grew, so did the legacy information system it used for both internal communications and external dealings with customers. BAL, however, faced difficult decisions as it sought to upgrade its procurement systems and processes to improve operations. In early 1999, BAL recruited a new national procurement manager, Russell Menere, whose immediate task was to look for gains in productivity by improving procurement processes, either through cost savings or by reduced processing time. To meet this objective, Menere initiated a number of short-term improvements. These included the rationalization of a large number of BAL's suppliers, improving BAL's relationships with its key suppliers; the introduction of a credit-card purchasing system for low-value, large-volume consumables; and the adoption of electronic ordering processes with BAL's larger suppliers. In 2002, with new opportunities available through e-business technology, Menere needed to decide what BAL's next step should be. Should BAL invest in a new system that would simplify the procurement process across different divisions and support complex interfaces with suppliers? Should BAL continue to sit on the fence and seek short-term improvement tools for integration with its existing legacy systems?

The CEO of a Silicon Valley start-up needed to make organizational and product changes to deliver a new software solution to a Fortune 500 customer. He was wondering how he should structure the company to best meet the requirements for this particular customer, while also positioning the company for future growth. He was operating under a tight time frame and was considering options ranging from focusing the entire company on this one project to spreading out his team over several projects. The case raises such issues as developing a successful business model for a software company, outlining a distinction between software platforms and software applications, strategies for product development in tight time frames, leading a company through a transition, knowing when it is time to change directions, setting and communicating a new direction amid ambiguity, and judging how much change employees can handle at one time.

Examines how the "old economy" of the traditional postal service has changed over time and how Australia Post is adapting to the many pressures that threaten its existence. With increasing adoption of e-mail as a means of communication, increased competition as a result of deregulation, and the strain of servicing a country with huge distances between inhabited locations and low population density, Australia Post needed to find a solution that would ensure the long-term viability of its business. The retail sector, with its 4,000-plus post office outlets, processed many different types of across-the-counter financial transactions, including banking transactions and utility payments. A project team was established to address the fundamental issue of how to structure the IT infrastructure to enable retail outlets to generate future revenue flows for Post. However, having established the Internet-based infrastructure to connect the extensive chain of retail outlets, the question was whether this new infrastructure would successfully entice third parties to buy into the model.

Supply chain management is all about software and systems, right? Put in the best technology, sit back, and watch as your processes run smoothly and the savings roll in? Apparently not. When HBR convened a panel of leading thinkers in the field of supply chain management, technology was not top of mind. People and relationships were the dominant issues of the day. The opportunities and problems created by globalization, for example, are requiring companies to establish relationships with new types of suppliers. The ever-present pressure for speed and cost containment is making it even more important to break down stubbornly high internal barriers and establish more effective cross-functional relationships. The costs of failure have never been higher. The leading supply chain performers are applying new technology, new innovations, and process thinking to far greater advantage than the laggards, reaping tremendous gains in all the variables that affect shareholder value: cost, customer service, asset productivity, and revenue generation. And the gap between the leaders and the losers is growing in almost every industry. This roundtable gathered many of the leading thinkers and doers in the field of supply chain management, including practitioners Scott Beth of Intuit, Sandra Morris of Intel, and Chris Gopal of Unisys. David Burt of the University of San Diego and Stanford's Hau Lee bring the latest research from academia. Accenture's William Copacino and the Warren Co.'s Robert Porter Lynch offer the consultant's perspectives.