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In 2021, the car manufacturer National Electric Vehicle Sweden (NEVS) faced the challenge of securing funding from its investor to launch an innovative mobility solution based on fleets of shared autonomous driving (AD) cars. The system was complex as it required the development of several interconnected components: from AD cars to a system to coordinate the vehicles with the city's digital and physical infrastructure. Furthermore, AD cars were still in a testing phase. The project was made even more complicated by NEVS' decision to target different customers: from companies which could use PONS as part of a leasing service or to transport goods, to municipalities willing to complement their public transportation services, or private citizens which could use it to commute or go shopping. NEVS felt the urge to launch the system. But was NEVS ready?

Based in Shanghai, China, Huazhu Group, the world's third-largest hotel operator, was known for its standardized IT system. It helped the company boost efficiency during the COVID-19 pandemic. Chief Digital Officer Xinxin Liu also faced some longer-term challenges: What resources and digital strategy would the company need as it tapped into the higher-end hotel market to become a multi-brand hotel giant? How should Huazhu balance the needs between using its IT solutions to scale its own operations on one hand and to empower other hotels on the other?

Many individuals and organisations have started working alongside AI. AI, and its influence on work and employment, has been studied with much interest by researchers and managers. The implementation of AI has brought commercial gains as well as challenges. This case outlines these challenges in an operations context and offers a hands-on analytical exercise for selecting the right strategy as well as addressing challenges. It also offers hands-on lessons about how to weather the wind in the organisation when introducing AI bots. Students will navigate the decision-making process regarding AI implementation, under the circumstance of AI bots working alongside humans.

In this exercise, students read a brief medical history of fictional patient Mr. Jones, who has chronic low back pain (LBP). They are also given an overview of LBP and its treatment options in the United States. Their task is to develop a value-based payment system that defines outcome measures (patient success) over time and indicates how to compensate clinicians based on those outcome measures, then to create a short presentation to pitch their idea to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services management team. This exercise is taught at Darden in the ""Solutions and Innovations in Health Care"" course and would also suitable in a module covering reimbursement in the health system.

Handout for Exercise UV8446

There's a limit to how much mental energy is available to us on any given day, so it's essential that we spend it deliberately and thoughtfully. The author details the process of creating a cognitive budget, using techniques from positive psychology, cognitive behavioral therapy, and behavioral economics. This tool can help employees at all levels direct their mental energy where their want it to go in order to be more deliberative and effective, in both their work and personal lives.

Organizations are facing a labor supply problem as they compete for skilled workers, but they can reframe the issue on the demand side. How? By deconstructing jobs into their constituent tasks and considering a wider range of talent options for accomplishing those tasks. Internal talent markets are one such opportunity that allows full-time employees to flow to appropriate work and managers to gain more options to get the work done.

Research shows that neurodiverse employees can meet or exceed performance expectations in a supportive workplace, and effective performance feedback is a good tool for creating such an environment. In this article, the authors provide a set of research-based guidelines that can help managers use feedback as a tool that supports increased engagement and performance among all employees, but particularly the neurodiverse.

Supplement to case 619003.

BDP International Inc. (BDP), one of the world’s leading privately-held freight logistics companies, provided chemical shipping services to eight of the top ten global chemical companies. In April 2021, it contracted with a chemical company for two shipping orders, each to a different destination, and each with a set number of containers to be shipped every month for a year. The containers were filled with a chemical used in the electronics industry. This was one of the biggest logistical challenges faced by BDP’s vice-president of Government and Industry Affairs and its director of Transportation, especially because the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic had disrupted the global shipping industry.<br><br>After having sorted out and arranged for the shipping, a few containers belonging to BDP’s client were engulfed in a fire that broke during the vessel’s voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. The containers and their contents were damaged beyond recovery. BDP had to scramble again to plan transportation, this time deciding how to inform the client, deal with possible late penalties and damage fees, and make whole on the order.

Hello Heart, a hypertension management app debated whether to go deep and cover other heart conditions, or to expand its solution to other chronic conditions.

The case illustrates the inventory management dilemma at The Star Clinic, a mobile medical clinic. The resident doctor at the clinic prefers commonly prescribed medicines, in particular Panadol, a brand of paracetamol (a pain relief drug), to be well stocked whereas the procurement manager seeks to minimise the holding cost of medicines. Wanting to set a very high patient service level, the doctor is demanding paracetamol to be readily available and dispensable at all times in the clinic. Patients should not need to wait three days before the next batch of stock arrives. On the contrary, the procurement manager adopts a financial perspective and focuses on the profit-and-loss reporting of the company. How can the clinic resolve the dilemma and enhance its inventory allocation and service levels?

Charu Thomas, cofounder and CEO of Ox, a software platform provider that helped retailers improve online order fulfillment, was proud of how her business had grown and earned positive feedback from investors, beta customers, and the press. Now, in the summer of 2021, revenue was on track to meet projections, and she began a comprehensive analysis of her costs, especially cloud hosting and computing costs. Ox's software was built and relied fully on cloud services, and Thomas had originally chosen a cloud provider based on capabilities and speed to build, not on cost. When she compared her costs to those of similarly sized start-ups, she realized Ox was paying 10 times what she expected to pay at scale. Fortunately, Thomas had recently welcomed Brent Sperry, who had worked on multiple cloud initiatives, as Ox's new chief operating officer. She shared her insights into the costs of cloud providers with Sperry and proposed the next project: benchmarking and reevaluating cloud costs for Ox. They aimed to better understand which activities were driving cloud-related costs, how prices compared across cloud providers for each activity, what operational constraints, if any, Ox currently faced, and the advantages of one provider over another. In the end, would they stick with the current cloud provider? What changes would they request on their current cloud bill? Would Ox benefit from a multi-cloud strategy? This field-based case, which is used in Darden's "Digital Operations" course, includes an overview of cloud computing's history and types; student and instructor spreadsheets with an interactive cost estimating model are also available.

Spreadsheet supplement to case UV8469.

Rain Industries Limited (Rain), through its wholly owned subsidiary Rain Carbon Inc., produced upcycled carbon products from the by-products of steel and petroleum and other industries. The demand- and supply-driven shifts and various sustainability initiatives by industries both downstream and upstream in Rain's existing supply chain could prove to be disruptive, requiring strategizing and future-proofing. When the Government of India's Ministry of Commerce and Industry banned the import of green petroleum coke, also called petcoke, in 2018, Rain's chief financial officer had to decide whether it was the right time to identify and implement different supply chain risk mitigation measures.

The case tracks Dineout's evolution into a full-scale tech solution provider for restaurants. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic struck the world. Several countries, including India, implemented complete lockdowns to control the spread of the virus. Stringent measures to ensure social distancing, night curfews and restrictions on social gatherings continued, which were a severe blow to the restaurant industry. The restaurants' revenue streams dried up as the diners avoided dining out and preferred food deliveries, which was against Dineout's core business model. The case ends with the questions on how Dineout should wade through the pandemic when its entire business model was being challenged.

Toyota's supply chain, long admired as an industry benchmark for efficiency and effectiveness, was unable to supply critical parts to replenish inventory in its plants pursuant to the global chip shortages that resulted from the general disruption created by the Covid-19 pandemic. During the first quarter of 2021, the delta variant of the virus was spreading across the globe. Southeast Asia, where Toyota sourced many auto components, was particularly hard hit. As demand for automobiles was surging during the second half of 2021, a critical shortage of microchips forced Toyota and other automakers to shut down some of their assembly lines. Set against this backdrop, the case focuses on options that firms might pursue in preparing for black swan events such as Covid-19.

The liner shipping industry transported the bulk of the world’s cross-country semi-finished and manufactured goods and was fundamental to global trade, economic growth, and prosperity. Despite its importance, the industry suffered from poor profitability. Common explanations were that shipping rates were too low and industry capacity too large. The COVID-19 pandemic also negatively affected the industry, followed by a quick recovery in the second half of 2020 that led to increased cargo volumes, and in 2021, the highest rates in almost two decades. Amid growing optimism, the question was whether the industry was on a long-term path to sustained profitability.