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Understanding the drivers of value is key to a technological transformation initiative. In the context of 'Durian Widgets' there is need for detailed analysis of business processes -contrary to initial intuition. On closer examination of the processes involved in manufacturing the widgets, students discover that the robotics technology which (on the surface) seemed cheaper and faster than the current manual operations, will actually result in inferior performance if implemented.

In the summer of 2019 in New Delhi, S K Shahi and his daughter, Meenakshi, faced a difficult problem. India had 19 centers of their non-profit, the Center for Social Responsibility and Leadership. Also called the 'Super 30' program, this offered free training for India's rigorous engineering entrance exam, the Joint Entrance Examination, to 30 - or sometimes 50 or 100 - high school graduates, selected by merit. Shahi and Meenakshi ran these centers using the corporate social responsibility funds donated by large state-owned companies in India, and some private companies. They had been operational for over a decade, with alumni working in academia, top tech companies, and education, having graduated from India's best colleges. They now had a difficult decision to make: should they expand in large metropolis cities - New Delhi; Kanpur; Mumbai - that would attract talented youth from all over India? Or else, given India's remote geographies and uneven distribution of income and educational benefits, was it best to expand to these tough regions to help those who most needed it? An additional source of concern was the operational and logistical cost of running centers in different parts of the country. What was the best way forward: city or town, urban or remote? New Delhi or Kashmir?

This case addresses the challenges faced by the Neuroscience Outpatient Center (NOC) at the American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC) and unfolds the Evidence Based Management Approach adopted to Optimize Efficiency and respond to the rising obstacles. After briefly describing the healthcare industry, the changes in ambulatory care model and the vision of AUBMC, authors dive into the challenges encountered by patients, physicians, and management at the NOC. The NOC is the first of several multidisciplinary centers launched at AUBMC to centralize services and facilitate patient care in an optimal manner. Such centers foster collaboration among faculty and ensure integration of care. This case focuses on the operational challenges faced by the NOC that ultimately impact the level of service and patients' experiences. The center was struggling to maintain patient satisfaction and optimal operations in place. The evidence-based healthcare management unit at AUBMC assisted the center's management in collecting the needed quantitative and qualitative data that can serve as a tool to provide effective recommendations to the center and improve patient experience.

This case focuses on the actions of Beijing Baman Technology Co., Ltd. ("Baman") to improve supply chain performance to support its innovative "boundaryless dining" business model. These actions included defining supply chain strategies and roles, and driving upstream and downstream collaboration. As a start-up, Baman served authentic Hunan Changde beef rice noodles, earning its restaurant chain great popularity online through successful community marketing. It then innovated its business model by breaking time and space restrictions of traditional eateries and diversifying its portfolio to include dine-in, take-away and retail products. However, after expanding its retail SKUs, Baman suffered from a bloated inventory and faltering cash flow at the end of 2017. Company founder Zhang Tianyi then realized the importance of supply chain management and the different characteristics between restaurant and retail supply chains. Since 2018, Baman has made relentless efforts to build on supply chain management capabilities by clearly defining supply chain strategies, tactically segmenting the management of restaurant and retail supply chains, and improving supply chain efficiency while reducing costs through upstream and downstream collaboration. The case ends with an open discussion: how could Baman manage more complex supply chains to boost efficiency with lower costs? By depicting the story of a start-up, this case expands on how a company can improve its supply chain to facilitate business model innovation, which may serve as a reference for supply chain management of small and medium-sized enterprises in other sectors of the real economy.

Based in the Canadian Prairies, Promotions Manufacturing had been manufacturing promotional items for over 40 years. The organizational structure consisted of four manufacturing units and the administration department, each with its own distinctive staffing needs and cost structure; consequently, profitability calculations and operations management had become increasingly difficult. In June 2018, the question of how to allocate the overhead and administration costs to each manufacturing unit became a pressing concern. The different cost allocation methods resulted in diverse profitability levels. Subsequently, decision-making with regard to production priorities, operation scheduling, and staffing needs had become unsystematic, often resulting in missed deadlines and disappointed customers. The general manager had to make a decision: which cost allocation method would offer the most accurate profit centre profitability, provide guidelines in reorganizing operations, and result in higher efficiencies?

The first two cases in this series are set in the financial services industry, and explore whether it is better for back-office workers to be generalists who provide the flexibility of being able to handle the complete range of transactions that the company faces or specialists who focus on a subset of the overall transaction mix. The objective is to introduce the advantages of demand pooling in reducing the variability associated with the forecasting of highly variable workloads, while also demonstrating the benefits to worker learning and efficiency improvements that can come from specialization. The case is set at the Retail Investor Group Operations of the Vanguard Group, the mutual funds and ETF giant. Karin Risi, the managing director, is faced with a back-office operation that hasn't kept up with massive transaction growth, one that is struggling under the weight of mounting client phone call and transaction volumes, client complaints, and buckling employee morale. And worse, the press was taking notice. The (A) case details the complexity in the growing backlog and frames the question of whether they should pursue a specialist model. The (B) case, for distribution in class, details the impact of an initial segmentation of workload into eight categories and poses additional questions for class discussion and analysis.

The first two cases in this series are set in the financial services industry, and explore whether it is better for back-office workers to be generalists who provide the flexibility of being able to handle the complete range of transactions that the company faces or specialists who focus on a subset of the overall transaction mix. The objective is to introduce the advantages of demand pooling in reducing the variability associated with the forecasting of highly variable workloads, while also demonstrating the benefits to worker learning and efficiency improvements that can come from specialization. The case is set at the Retail Investor Group Operations of the Vanguard Group, the mutual funds and ETF giant. Karin Risi, the managing director, is faced with a back-office operation that hasn't kept up with massive transaction growth, one that is struggling under the weight of mounting client phone call and transaction volumes, client complaints, and buckling employee morale. And worse, the press was taking notice. The (A) case details the complexity in the growing backlog and frames the question of whether they should pursue a specialist model. The (B) case, for distribution in class, details the impact of an initial segmentation of workload into eight categories and poses additional questions for class discussion and analysis.

Château Lafite Rothschild produces some of the world's most expensive wine, making the product an attractive target for counterfeiters. Fighting these counterfeiters has proven difficult for the Château as the traceability in the wine supply chain is insufficient and stakeholders have different interests and capabilities in identifying fake wine. As traceability is the key to preventing counterfeit wines from entering the wine supply chain, how to use advanced technologies to fight counterfeiters has received increasing attention. Besides existing technologies such as barcodes, Quick Response Codes (QR codes), Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), and Electronic Product Codes (EPC), blockchain as an emerging technology has also come into play. The case provides an opportunity for students to understand the benefits and limitations of using different technologies, especially the emerging blockchain technology, to improve traceability in the supply chain. Students will learn how to assess the feasibility of using blockchain in supply chain management and discuss different blockchain strategies.

In May 2019, the vice-president of operations at Danby Products Ltd. (Danby) was concerned that the production facility for the company’s latest product, Parcel Guard, would not be able to keep up with demand. Parcel Guard was one of the most anticipated new products that Danby had produced in years, and if the sales estimates were reliable, the vice-president needed to start thinking about how she could adjust capacity to keep up with new orders. The new production facility was located just east of Toronto, as Danby had determined that making the product locally would enable the company to respond faster to changes in demand while keeping costs under control. In order to meet anticipated demand, the options included adding new equipment to increase the capacity of the two production lines, adding a third production line, or adding additional shifts.

With its mission to "unsmoke the world" and its bold new purpose to replace cigarettes with less harmful tobacco products, Philip Morris International (PMI) was revolutionizing every part of its existing business model and, with it, the tobacco industry. Over a four-year period, PMI had established an entirely new product category for its new heated-tobacco IQOS brand and had become the global market leader in this fastest-growing group of reduced-risk products in the tobacco industry. To stay ahead of the rapidly evolving competition and to respond fast to changing market conditions, PMI fundamentally had to change its business model and the way it worked. Everyone in the organization was encouraged and empowered to participate actively in PMI's transformation journey, and digital had become the disruptive catalyst. Digital innovations in the supply chain were challenging existing processes and unlocked other opportunities that PMI had not thought about before. PMI had a two- to four-year lead on its main competitors and was now in a position to shape its future business model. But how was the business going to develop and what type of supply chain should it create to scale up its business in a volatile market where speed was king? The executive leadership team was under pressure to make this key decision soon, as the final supply chain strategy depended on it. But for a traditional B2B consumer goods company that was transforming into a technological customer-centric organization that operated within the regulatory constraints of the tobacco industry, which business model would work best for PMI?

This brief note provides a description of the A3 report, a classic problem-solving methodology associated with the Toyota Production System. A3 thinking may be used for many activities, including problem solving, proposal writing, and status reporting. The six elements of an A3 report are described briefly.

This case focuses on the supply chain strategy of Apple Inc. (Apple). Set in early 2020, it provides a detailed description of the company's supply chain network and capabilities. Data in the case allows students to develop an understanding of Apple's source of competitiveness and to gain insights into the management of a large, complex global supply chain network that focused on the intersection of services, hardware and software. Students will obtain an understanding of the supply chain challenges faced by Apple, in the context of supporting its corporate strategy and growth objectives.

In spring 2018, the chief supply chain officer of Traeger Pellet Grills, LLC, based in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States, was visiting a supplier in in Changzhou, China. He was meeting with the supplier the next day but had not fully decided how to manage the meeting. The supplier was responsible for a large portion of the company's supply of grills but was also positioning itself as a competitor by tooling, designing, and producing knock-off products that were then directly marketed to consumers in the company's strongest market-the United States. Although the supplier denied any involvement in the knock-off grills, the chief supply chain officer knew the tooling and styling were impossibly similar to his company's products and there was no other facility in that supplier's area with the capability to make look-alike grills at that level. The chief supply chain officer had to decide how to deal with the rebellious supplier.

In spring 2018, the chief supply chain officer of Traeger Pellet Grills, LLC, based in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States, was visiting a supplier in in Changzhou, China. He was meeting with the supplier the next day but had not fully decided how to manage the meeting. The supplier was responsible for a large portion of the company’s supply of grills but was also positioning itself as a competitor by tooling, designing, and producing knock-off products that were then directly marketed to consumers in the company’s strongest market—the United States. Although the supplier denied any involvement in the knock-off grills, the chief supply chain officer knew the tooling and styling were impossibly similar to his company’s products and there was no other facility in that supplier's area with the capability to make look-alike grills at that level. The chief supply chain officer had to decide how to deal with the rebellious supplier.

On April 10, 2018, after his morning meeting about the Goodman School of Business expansion project, the site superintendent for the project realized he should consider reworking the schedule for the remainder of the expansion project. The plan had the renovation work in the main hallways scheduled to be done in fall 2018, but the hallways would be used to access all classrooms during that semester. During classroom changeover times, 1,200+ students could be in the hallways, so if construction was underway at that time there could be delays, and traffic flow would be impeded. The challenge for the site superintendent, having already committed to finishing the renovation of eight classrooms and an entire floor of offices before the start of fall classes, was determining whether all the sub-trades involved in the project had capacity and could be coordinated in a way that would result in the completion of the hallways on time for the fall semester.

Microsoft Project File for product 8B20D012.

Spreadsheet for product 8B20D012.

On April 10, 2018, after his morning meeting about the Goodman School of Business expansion project, the site superintendent for the project realized he should consider reworking the schedule for the remainder of the expansion project. The plan had the renovation work in the main hallways scheduled to be done in fall 2018, but the hallways would be used to access all classrooms during that semester. During classroom changeover times, 1,200+ students could be in the hallways, so if construction was underway at that time there could be delays, and traffic flow would be impeded. The challenge for the site superintendent, having already committed to finishing the renovation of eight classrooms and an entire floor of offices before the start of fall classes, was determining whether all the sub-trades involved in the project had capacity and could be coordinated in a way that would result in the completion of the hallways on time for the fall semester.

While there are many organizations that seek to quickly grow into multi-unit operations, the academic literature is surprisingly limited in what advice it provides to those confronting the managerial capacity limitations scaling up to multiple units presents. In this Executive Digest, we detail one co-author's experience in rapidly developing the east coast market for Starbucks and outline the knowledge he brought to the process that came from prior rapid growth experiences with Burger King, Blockbuster, and Wendy's. We present seven key steps for rapidly scaling that can guide any manager seeking to build a multi-unit operation quickly.

While awareness of data quality has increased in recent years, there have been very few studies on the actual level of data quality within organizations. This article outlines the analysis of 75 data quality assessments collected over the course of 2 years from a wide range of organizations, data sets, and business processes. The results reveal that data is in far worse shape than most managers realize. On average, 47% of recently created data records have at least one critical error. High-quality data is the exception, with only 3% of the DQ scores rated acceptable (≥97%). Indeed, the results suggest an unhealthy organizational tolerance of bad data and underscore the magnitude of improvement organizations need to make in order to be truly effective in the knowledge economy. By providing a unique insight into quality as the data is actually used and a benchmark for data quality practitioners, this article serves as a call-to-action for all organizations-regardless of size and type-to determine their level of data quality. Finally, we set out a typology that presents a categorical scheme to promote preemptive actions against the most frequent types of data error.