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Waiting lines, sometimes called queuing situations, are encountered widely in business operations. Improvements to the waiting-line process would result, in many cases, in better use of labor, equipment and facilities, and a greater capability to provide customers with a level of service that matches the business objective. This note presents methods for determining the resources needed to provide particular service attributes in waiting-line situations.

Describes the organizational transformation occurring at the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission (WSSC), a public utility. Faced with the possibility of privatization after decades of providing service in the absence of competition or performance pressures, the WSSC leadership orchestrates a reorganization to improve efficiency and effectiveness, while facing massive layoffs. A critical decision the organization faces is whether, and how, to add new entrepreneurial services to increase otherwise flat revenues. Analyses focus on assessment of the change process and approach.

In an attempt to reduce its ecological footprint, Interface Americas, a leading manufacturer of commercial carpet tile, has launched the Evergreen Services Agreement (ESA)--a lease agreement that provides would-be carpet purchasers with comprehensive floor-covering services (color, texture, warmth, beauty, acoustics, and safety). Under ESA, Interface retains ownership of all carpet material, thereby ensuring proper recycling. Despite active media attention and a lot of interested calls from potential buyers, Interface is having difficulty selling ESA. CEO Dan Hendrix is at a crossroad and must decide whether to continue support for ESA or to focus on other initiatives. This case, grounded in a failed negotiation with the University of Texas, Houston, details a discussion of the difficulties of structuring a long-term lease agreement, defining a new service value proposition for the customer, and developing a sustainable business model for product-related services.

To distribute products to very small retailers in a very fragmented retail environment, the local subsidiary of a large consumer products company created an innovative distribution mechanism. The subsidiary's Small Local Stores division employed middlemen who distributed vans full of consumer products throughout the Philippines. The channel was growing rapidly, but it was the company's least profitable. Now the subsidiary had to decide what to do. Should it try to squeeze more margins out of the channel, even if that would lower the middlemen's incentives? Should it scrap the channel altogether? Or should it try to build an internal capability to reach the smallest stores, even if it involved significant capital expenditures? Regional management was due to arrive and the company had to come up with a plan.

This case is set in spring 2000, several months after two successive, failed missions to the planet Mars. Students are asked to evaluate the reasons for these failures in the context of NASA's "Faster, Better, Cheaper" program, which was initiated in 1992. They are also faced with the task of reconstructing a program for the exploration of Mars that considers the many uncertainties--political, financial, outcome related, and scientific--that can impact the program. Includes color exhibits.

Supplements the (A) case.

The Dubai Ports Authority (DPA) wishes to digitize many of the documents it shares with its external partners, including shipping lines and agents, merchants, and the country's customs authority. DPA also wishes to automate the many document transmissions related to ships' manifests. At the time of the case, the worldwide shipping industry is characterized by low levels of automation, a proliferation of incompatible data standards, and many independent players. All of these factors complicate digitization efforts. DPA decides to write its manifest documentation system itself and must make several other decisions related to system implementation and rollout.

Supplements the (A) case.

Metropolitan Maintenance is a small, locally owned janitorial service. For some time the company has been pursuing a large commercial contract, and the president has just been notified that they have been awarded the contract. Shortly after finding out the company has received the contract, he discovers that a number of employees at the site are unhappy and threatening to walk out. He must act quickly to resolve the conflict among the employees as the contract start date was only a week away.

Henleys, one of the largest electronics companies in the world, started to import domestic appliances and personal care (DAP) products into the Chinese market in 1990. Soon after, Henleys established a DAP manufacturing facility in China and from a pool of three candidates, selected a state-run distributor, Dongxi Co., as the sole distributor in Shanghai. Over several years, Dongxi developed an extensive retailer network for the new DAP market in Shanghai, and the average annual growth rate was 200% between 1990 and 1997. The cooperation between Henleys and Dongxi was productive until 1999, when Dongxi's efficiency slid into decline and many salespeople departed from the company, including the deputy general manager, who had been in charge of DAP distribution. Henleys faced a series of decisions regarding the possible restructuring of the distribution channels in a business environment quite different from that of 1990, when Henleys had made its distributor selection decisions.

This problem set focuses on process-analysis calculations, including throughput, capacity, cycle time, and utilization. See also UV3514 and UV3516.

This problem set focuses on process-analysis calculations, including throughput, capacity, cycle time, and utilization. See also UV3512 and UV3516.

This problem set focuses on process-analysis calculations, including throughput, capacity, cycle time, and utilization. See also UV3512 and UV3514.

For 10 years, Academic Medical Hospital's chief of staff had struggled to decrease the amount of time patients spend waiting in the emergency department. Moving patients through the department is a complex task and therefore long wait times had always been excused. But now, the hospital has adopted Six Sigma, a highly disciplined and data-intensive method for streamlining the emergency-care activities and reducing patient wait time. This case traces the design and implementation of a Black Belt improvement project. The various phases of Six Sigma methodology (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) are described in the setting of the patient wait-time study and several statistical tools are demonstrated with operating- performance data. The case ends with the Black Belt being concerned about the statistical significance of the results of the recently completed pilot study as well as deep-rooted implementation resistance from several key stakeholders in the hospital and in the medical school. Having led her team through the various phases of Six Sigma and having completed the pilot study, the Black Belt wonders how to focus the next team meeting. The case can be used to teach Six Sigma methodology, to critique effectiveness of application of the phases and tools, and to deal with the statistical significance issues and the implementation concerns. See also the B and C cases.

Mount Auburn Hospital is preparing to introduce a physician order entry (POE) system throughout the hospital, starting with the labor and delivery ward. POE systems replace paper-based and oral medication ordering processes with an information system; the physician uses the system to enter medication orders, which are then transferred to the hospital's pharmacy. This is Mount Auburn's first experience with POE systems, and the implementation team must determine how best to introduce the technology to the physicians and other personnel who will use it.

The case illustrates the efforts of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC) in the area of emergency response preparedness. It provides an anecdotal description of IFRC's failure in promptly responding to the 1998 Hurricane Mitch disaster that swept through Central America. It then proceeds in describing how the disaster triggered off IFRC's pilot initiative, the Pan-American Disaster Response Unit, as well as general awareness on the need to institutionalize preparedness by leveraging on five different "resources": people, knowledge, goods, money, and the humanitarian community.

In a revolutionary technology plant, iron ore is converted into pure iron by hydrogen reduction. The case describes the process flow, including flow diagrams, mass balances, yields, and equipment uptimes. The case then describes the fixed and variable cost structure of labor, material and equipment, resulting in an analysis of the plant economics.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. The quality initiative Six Sigma is sweeping the United States. Is it good for whatever ails your company? Consultant Michael Hammer thinks not. He warns that in their quest for operations performance improvement, many business leaders fail to distinguish its strengths from its weaknesses. Hammer presents a strategic, holistic approach--business process management--in which Six Sigma is only one of many useful initiatives. If a business process, such as billing customers, is fundamentally defective, why use Six Sigma to improve the performance of it? Companies that Hammer calls process enterprises (Caterpillar, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Progressive Casualty Insurance, Bombardier, and IBM) have found more success redesigning whole processes. Certainly, Six Sigma's ability to unearth root causes of problems is outstanding for narrow cost-saving improvements. But it deploys statistical analytic tools to uncover flaws in the execution of an existing process without asking whether the process itself is flawed. Six Sigma assumes that the existing design is fundamentally sound--a dangerous assumption. For peak performance, companies should position Six Sigma in the context of process management and assign process owners. Process owners ensure that all performance initiatives (Six Sigma, enterprise resource planning, balanced scorecard, customer relationship management and so on) are integrated to support strategic goals. Fitting Six Sigma into the process-management framework allows organizations to enjoy Six Sigma's benefits while keeping it away from areas where it doesn't belong. Process enterprises already are reaping cost savings, accelerated new-product introduction, improvements in customer satisfaction, and increases in profitability.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Regardless of the industry, all companies are operating on ever faster evolutionary tracks and at ever greater risk. A company's real core capability--perhaps its only sustainable one, say authors Charles Fine, Roger Vardan, Robert Pethick, and Jamal El-Hout--is its ability to redesign its value chain continually, reshuffling structural, technological, financial, and human assets to find maximum, albeit temporary, competitive advantage. The ultimate goal of strategic value chain analysis, say the authors, is building an organizational capability for fast response to rapidly evolving industry dynamics. To execute such an analysis, the authors developed a value chain strategy framework during a year-long strategic assessment at the General Motors Powertrain organization. The framework seeks to answer four key questions: Where is value being created and what activities are not adding to overall enterprise value? What areas of the business should remain in-house vs. be outsourced? Where should investments be made and how should they be leveraged? How can the value chain be organized to optimize existing and emerging alliances? To answer those questions, the authors employ not only traditional economic value-added analysis, but also their own strategic value assessment, which considers factors such as customer preferences, the rate of change of underlying technology, competitive position in the marketplace, depth of the supply base, and the integral or modular nature of the asset. The wide applicability of the framework is illustrated in the authors' discussion of IBM's decision to outsource its first PC microprocessor to Intel, a consumer products company's decision to outsource the manufacture of a branded product, and the Recording Industry Association of America's decision to quell rather than acquire Napster's file-sharing capability.

The new director of logistics at Holt Renfrew, a high-end retailer of men's and women's fashions, has been asked to prepare a detailed plan for dealing with the company's $40 million warehoused inventory and its chronic stock-out problems. Given the opportunity to prove how logistics can benefit the company's profit margin, the director prepares a three-fold strategy: improve the physical layout and process flow in the distribution center, upgrade the distribution systems and business processes, and re-allocate human resources. His challenge is augmented by the need to receive merchandise from international suppliers and distribute it quickly to compete in the fast-paced fashion industry.