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One of the founders of a small business owners' purchasing cooperative organized four months earlier, was reflecting on its successful performance. The members of the co-op were willing to share responsibilities in the management of the co-op's primary activities of obtaining price quotes, invoicing members, and making delivery arrangements. The members were currently considering the possibility of extending the types of materials purchased collaboratively to services such as photocopying and printing of brochures and business cards. She wondered how best to promote the growth of the purchasing co-op and therefore, needed to create an action and implementation plan, considering: membership size, types of products and services purchased, qualitative and quantitative benefits of co-op involvement, vendor management and allocation of resources.

Blue Mountain Resorts had been driving its business with a service quality program for several years, which the vice-president of human resources was responsible for coordinating. With a new ski season underway, and the critical Christmas season approaching, he wanted to continue progress of the program by introducing a new set of initiatives. He had recently gathered together a team of Blue Mountain Resort managers, from a variety of different areas in the company, to identify opportunities to improve service quality. The group provided three proposals that he felt warranted consideration. At the upcoming executive team meeting, he would be expected to set the priorities for the coming year and recommend what action, if any, should be taken for each. He had to decide which programs made the most sense for immediate action and which ones required additional study and analysis. Each of the proposals affected different parts of the organization, so he also needed to be concerned about who else in the company should be involved in further evaluation and implementation.

One of the founders of a small business owners' purchasing cooperative organized four months earlier, was reflecting on its successful performance. The members of the co-op were willing to share responsibilities in the management of the co-op's primary activities of obtaining price quotes, invoicing members, and making delivery arrangements. The members were currently considering the possibility of extending the types of materials purchased collaboratively to services such as photocopying and printing of brochures and business cards. She wondered how best to promote the growth of the purchasing co-op and therefore, needed to create an action and implementation plan, considering: membership size, types of products and services purchased, qualitative and quantitative benefits of co-op involvement, vendor management and allocation of resources.

Procter & Gamble's (P&G) Pringles potato chips have been a very successful brand. This case reviews the development and first launch in the United States, then in markets around the world. Italy is one of the last countries where Pringles will be launched. Should P&G Italy employ the successful launch strategy used throughout Europe or devise its own?

Carrier, a division of mulitbusiness United Technologies Corporation (UTC), is looking for ways to grow its business. Carrier is considering expansion into commercial refrigeration and is examining a proposed purchase of Tyler Corporation--a major player in the display-case market. The case provides detail on various segments of the heating and cooling markets and thus allows analysis of the attractiveness of these segments to Carrier. The case also provides detailed forecasts for students to use in valuing the target, Tyler. The mechanics of a basic valuation are straightforward. There are, however, several opportunities for a more refined analysis.

This note describes the Capabilities Module in the core-curriculum Operations Management course at the Darden School.

This note describes the Customer Module in the core-curriculum Operations Management course at the Darden School.

Creemore Springs Brewery, a small, independent brewer, offered new, high quality alternatives to premium beer connoisseurs. Continuing quality problems with the company that cleaned its bottles prompted the president of Creemore Springs Brewery to decide whether or not to recommend moving the bottle cleaning operation from the external contractor and bring it in-house. To assess the company's options he must analyse the qualitative and quantitative costs and benefits of making such a move by performing a task analysis, reviewing the production process and calculating the payback.

Creemore Springs Brewery, a small, independent brewer, offered new, high quality alternatives to premium beer connoisseurs. Continuing quality problems with the company that cleaned its bottles prompted the president of Creemore Springs Brewery to decide whether or not to recommend moving the bottle cleaning operation from the external contractor and bring it in-house. To assess the company's options he must analyse the qualitative and quantitative costs and benefits of making such a move by performing a task analysis, reviewing the production process and calculating the payback.

IBM must adapt its research process to the volatility of the Internet market. Issues include incentives, research charter, reward systems, and linkages to business units and customers.

Steve Briggs, a PhD biologist, is asked to propose a strategy to take global life-science giant Novartis into the rapidly expanding field of plant genomics.

Incat is a cutting-edge manufacturer of high-speed aluminum catamaran ferries. The company has been an entrepreneurial success story, growing to be the largest private employer in its home state of Tasmania, Australia. By 2000, Robert Clifford, the company's dynamic CEO and founder, must choose between two lucrative orders for different ferry designs. One order builds off of the current 96-meter design while the other would push Incat to make a quantum jump to 200 meters. Analysis of the tradeoffs in this "bet-the-company" decision raises issues of manufacturing complexity, operations capabilities, and the challenges of sustainable growth.

Describes Borders Group, a well-known retail chain, in late 1999 and its traditional strengths and rapid growth in the 1990s. By 1990, however, the company had fallen behind Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble in leveraging the Internet for book retailing, although it potentially had an opportunity to be the leader in integrating the store with the Internet in a "bricks and clicks" model. Allows students to explore the opportunities and pitfalls in pursuing bricks and clicks. Highlights the need for excellence in store execution.

Managers now know that knowledge is an organization's most vital competitive asset. But most are still struggling with practicalities. How can knowledge be leveraged into marketplace success in any organization? A new economy is emerging built on knowledge and innovation. At its center are knowledge workers, whose mission is not only to create a world of new products and services, but also rethink the larger purposes and day-to-day practices of the world of business. The case describes the efforts for effective knowledge management for one of the communities inside Xerox.

The technology deployment specialist of the Adelaide District School Board, Christine Clark, needed to make immediate changes to the purchasing system in response to service demands. The current system was not widely accessible or user-friendly, and was creating heavy workloads and the need for overtime. Senior management recognized the advantages of implementing a system that would integrate the data processing of all functions, including human resources, inventory, finance, purchasing, etc., and gave her the mandate to find an integrated system and develop a proposal for its implementation. In addition to finding a system that would meet these criteria, she had to consider the conflicting interests of different users, a new system that had been implemented in the finance department, and the ongoing changes in the organization.

Supplements the (A) case.

Introduces a "new-economy" company, Madison Avenue, facing challenges of mega-success. In the two years since its founding, the company's revenues have grown from zero to nearly $30 million, head count has swollen from the start-up handful to more than 200, and the client base has gone from one to dozens. In the company's short life, Madison Avenue's managers have already tried four organizational forms to more efficiently and reliably meet the needs of its customers. Despite the intense, ongoing efforts to find an appropriate organizational form, employees struggle to keep pace with ever-increasing demands. Ted Samson, an implementation engineer at Madison Avenue and a reservist in the Marine Corps, expresses a collective frustration in an e-mail to his boss. The case contains a history of Madison Avenue, starting with its serendipitous creation as an outgrowth of a family business's efforts to advertise on the Web and the collateral development of an expertise in Web advertising and the evolution of the company's business model. Gives a detailed explanation of the internal processes by which Madison Avenue creates, implements, and optimizes online advertising campaigns for its clients. The case asks students to analyze how Madison Avenue currently does its work and then to design a "target condition"--based upon analysis of the company's "current condition"--of how Madison Avenue's internal processes might be redesigned in order to produce higher quality ad campaigns, at less cost, with shorter lead-times, and with greater flexibility in responding to customer needs.

Chronicles the initial efforts to teach a health care organization to manage itself according to the principles of the Toyota Production System (TPS). Describes the decision and dilemmas that arose from the implementation experiment. Builds on Bowen and Spear's earlier research in industrial settings. They found that TPS is an integrated approach to designing, doing, and improving the work of individual people and of groups of people working collaboratively to produce and deliver goods, services, and information. The Deaconess-Glover Hospital project tested the efficacy of the TPS in a nonindustrial setting (i.e., health care) and also offered insight into how to convert an organization, managed by its existing management system to one managed by TPS principles. This case provides background on Deaconess-Glover Hospital and on the TPS teacher, John Kenagy. Describes how Kenagy observed the work at the hospital to understand the system. Given how Kenagy gathered data and based on what he directly observed, what should he recommend to managers about their next step?

Fell-Fab Products is a manufacturer of interior coverings for airlines, bus companies and passenger rail services. A secondary business for the company is the manufacture of other sewn and welded textiles such as mail bags, tents, etc. One of Fell-Fab Products' important airline customers asked the company if it was interested in diversifying into service by taking on a contract to manage all aspects of the interior coverings business. The president of Fell-Fab Products must assess the differences between service management and manufacturing, decide whether Fell-Fab is capable of doing a good job at service and determine whether the business makes economic sense for the company. This case and the accompanying Fell-Fab Products (B) case (product 9B00D022) explore some of the implications of manufacturers diversifying into services.

Shortly after Fell-Fab Products went through the decision-making process of whether to move into service management in addition to manufacturing, it learned that European Airlines, one of its major European customers, would no longer purchase products directly from Fell-Fab Products. Instead, European Airlines instructed Fell-Fab Products to sell to Aircraft Interior Refurbishment. The president of Fell-Fab wondered how this information would affect his decision. This supplement to Fell-Fab Products (A) (9B00D021) raises the possibility of a strategic alliance.