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The outsourcing of the logistics activities has recently been accelerating. While outsourcing offers great potential for cost savings for the manufacturer, the danger of customer service degradation should not be underestimated. The logistics service provider (3PL), on the other hand, should have flexible and efficient processes so as to achieve the service requirements of its client in a profitable fashion. The case provides an appropriate background to discuss ways to obtain a mutually beneficial contract in outsourced logistics services.

The outsourcing of the logistics activities has recently been accelerating. While outsourcing offers great potential for cost savings for the manufacturer, the danger of customer service degradation should not be underestimated. The logistics service provider (3PL), on the other hand, should have flexible and efficient processes so as to achieve the service requirements of its client in a profitable fashion. The case provides an appropriate background to discuss ways to obtain a mutually beneficial contract in outsourced logistics services.

Describes an Israeli joint venture company, created to convert military technology to civilian uses. Also documents the explosive growth of the Israeli high-technology sector in the 1990s.

Media companies have used digital rights management to protect their copyrighted materials from infringement. These technologies may also help companies shield proprietary information from digital attacks.

Companies should make design and manufacturing decisions with eventual recycling and reconditioning of their products in mind. Here are the five key activities for establishing a reverse supply chain.

In the late 1990s, the National Railroad Passenger Corporation (Amtrak) faced a rude awakening as Congress stipulated that it eliminate its reliance on federal subsidies by 2002. In response, Amtrak drew up a plan for self-sufficiency, the centerpiece of which was a new high-speed passenger service that, it was hoped, would boost revenue enough to make Amtrak self-sufficient by 2002. To run this new service, Amtrak needed to purchase $750 million worth of new locomotives and train sets in 1999. Three alternatives were available for funding the purchase: debt financing, lease financing, or reliance on federal sources. The case opens with Amtrak's CFO instructing her staff in April 1999 to review a leveraged-lease proposal that has just been submitted by BNY Capital Funding LLC. The objectives of the case are to introduce students to financial leases as a financing alternative, explore the lease-versus-buy decision and the conditions under which financial lease arrangements make sense, and exercise skills in the valuation of financial leases.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. In theory, trade promotions should benefit everyone involved. In practice, however, manufacturers and retailers often use trade promotions as weapons in a zero-sum game, and consumers are sometimes left out altogether. It need not be that way. Over the past three years, David Bell, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, and Xavier Drèze, a visiting assistant professor of marketing at UCLA's Anderson School, have examined the theoretical and practical problems associated with trade promotions, and they explain how the right kind of deal can be created -- a transparent system that generates mutual trust and provides benefits to both manufacturers and retailers. The key is proper implementation of what is thus far a little understood tool: the pay-for-performance trade promotion, in which retailers get rewarded according to how much they sell, not how much they buy. The authors explain how the most accepted way of doing promotions today -- which rewards retailers for effective buying rather than effective marketing -- creates a variety of inefficiencies that drain resources from their intended purpose. Using a hypothetical case involving much-simplified mathematics, they go on to demonstrate how manufacturers can design pay-for-performance options that retailers can embrace. They also illustrate how one national beverage company made pay-for-performance deals work in practice. Finally, they offer practical advice to help senior managers rethink the elements of organizational culture that stand in the way of a more effective approach to trade promotions -- and, by extension, block better, more profitable relationships all along the channel.

Provides an overview of some important aspects of the relational data models that underlie today's enterprise-level information technologies, such as enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management. Key concepts covered include relational data and integration. A stylized example is provided.

Anticipates an Australian innovation (not mentioned here) that Nobel's Explosives later considers. This is an abridged version of ICI--Nobel's Explosive Co. (IMD028), which considers the Australian innovation.

In a decade, CEMEX has become the third largest cement company in the world and has achieved an enviable growth record. CEMEX has established its public image as a digital leader, leveraging information technology and e-business ventures in the traditional low-tech and conventional cement industry. The case, however, illustrates that being a digital leader is only part of the story. The CEMEX Way is focused on developing the right behaviors and values in CEMEX people globally to use information about products, customers, and operations effectively. This requires deploying common processes, information practices, and IT infrastructure to promote profitable growth globally and locally as well as integrate its acquisitions to its way of doing business rapidly. As the cement industry is rapidly consolidating worldwide, the case raises the issue of how a company competes with information, people, and IT capabilities to use its knowledge and information to bring the company's growth to new levels. This is an abridged version of a case.

In a decade, CEMEX has become the third largest cement company in the world and has achieved an enviable growth record. CEMEX has established its public image as a digital leader, leveraging information technology and e-business ventures in the traditional low-tech and conventional cement industry. The case, however, illustrates that being a digital leader is only part of the story. The CEMEX Way is focused on developing the right behaviors and values in CEMEX people globally to use information about products, customers, and operations effectively. This requires deploying common processes, information practices, and IT infrastructure to promote profitable growth globally and locally as well as integrate its acquisitions to its way of doing business rapidly. As the cement industry is rapidly consolidating worldwide, the case raises the issue of how a company competes with information, people, and IT capabilities to use its knowledge and information to bring the company's growth to new levels.

Supplements the (A) case.

This case examines a company that rents and leases computers. The primary objective of the case is to provide a scenario where students can see the link between operational flow measures such as inventory, throughput, and flow time and financial flows. The case presents a scenario where a firm sees financial performance worsen even though sales increase. A link between the operational measures and financial flows allows students to understand the causes.

Once a business performs a complex activity well, the parent organization often wants to replicate that success. But doing that is surprisingly difficult, and businesses nearly always fail when they try to reproduce a best practice. The reason? People approaching best-practice replication are overly optimistic and overconfident. Getting it right the second time (and all the times after that) involves adjusting for overconfidence in your own abilities and imposing strict discipline on the process and the organization. The authors studied numerous business settings to find out how organizational routines were successfully reproduced, and they identified five steps for successful replication. First, make sure you've got something that can be copied and that's worth copying. Second, work from a single template. It provides proof of success, performance measurements, a tactical approach, and a reference for when problems arise. Third, copy the example exactly, and fourth, make changes only after you achieve acceptable results. Fifth, don't throw away the template. If your copy doesn't work, you can use the template to identify and solve problems. Best-practice replication, while less glamorous than pure innovation, contributes enormously to the bottom line of most companies. The article's examples--Banc One, Rank Xerox, Intel, Starbucks, and Re/Max Israel--prove that exact copying is a nontrivial, challenging accomplishment.

This note examines a firm's decisions about its cycle-stock ordering activities and the cost-element considerations behind those decisions. Students learn that, as materials flow from suppliers through a firm's operations to customers, the objective is to develop and implement a management system that can improve the cost effectiveness of the investments in inventory.

This note summarizes how the Operations Strategy Module in the Operations Management course can help students understand that managers can create a significant competitive advantage through strategic choices regarding a firm's development and deployment of new-process technologies, design and implementation of information-based coordination systems, and configuration and focus of operating facilities.

Supplements the (A) case.

Supplements the (A) case.

CEO Michael Collins must decide if and how a process he developed to further innovation in the kids' industry could port over to other industries. The process was based on Collins' experiences as an inventor and as a venture capitalist, and it allowed his company to be an intermediary between inventors and innovation-seeking companies. The process seemed to be working quite well in the kids' industry and Collins had to decide what would "travel" to a different vertical.