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In June 2015, Vasant Farm Fresh (VFF) was creating a supply chain in Ahmedabad, India, to integrate farmers with retailers and provide fresh produce to customers. Fruits and vegetables have a short shelf life, harvesting operations tend to be labour intensive, and produce quantity is unlikely to grow substantially. To increase the shelf life of fresh produce, farmers need storage facilities, such as refrigerators or cold-water vessels, to store freshly harvested produce. VFF established a collection centre to aid farmers in selling their produce and in receiving higher returns. The collection centre was close to the farms so that the produce could be distributed to the agricultural produce market committee market and to VFF's new retail venture, Vasant Veggies. However, wastage was still considerable even after the centre was established. The founder of Vasant Veggies must identify the optimal procurement quantity for fresh produce.

Service systems are inherently subject to variability, whether through customers, service providers, suppliers, or unexpected events. Yet customers demand excellence and consistency regardless of this variability. In general, there are two ways to handle this variability-through people or through processes. We use the concept of robustness to describe these two approaches, addressing when one or the other might be appropriate and discussing how and why one might transition from one approach to the other.

In 2012, Fastjet acquired Fly540, a low-cost airline with operations in Tanzania, Kenya, Angola, and Ghana, and began operating as a low-cost carrier with the goal to become the most successful pan-African low-cost airline. Since starting operations, Fastjet had grown tremendously, achieving strong market acceptance and a reputation for reliability and punctuality. Although yield per passenger had increased over its first two years, Fastjet had continued to report operating losses due to its poorly performing operations in Kenya, Angola, and Ghana. In September 2014, Fastjet had the opportunity to expand into other African regions, and the company’s chief executive officer needed to consider his options to successfully grow the company’s operations.

Student spreadsheet for case W18744

This case describes packaging supplier and equipment vendor Tetra Pak and their Digital Transformation Program, detailing why Tetra Pak undertook this effort, how they organized the program, identified and selected which technologies to implement and the steps they took to overcome implementation challenges. The case structures Tetra Pak's voyage around their priorities: Connected Solutions, Advanced Analytics and a Connected Workforce. The emphasis is on the value proposition of Industry 4.0 and Supply Chain Digitalization for both Tetra Pak and their customers. Learning objective: The learning objective to illustrate an effective and successful effort develop Industry 4.0 and Supply Chain Digitalization capabilities. focusing on the process of identifying technology priorities, establishing the business case in a B2B context, and successfully implementing innovative solutions. The case provides a general introduction to the definition of Industry 4.0 and the key technologies associated with the term.

The case presents the impact of the digital disruption coming from the sharing economy from the perspective of the largest American auto manufacturer, General Motors (GM). ?The car-sharing business led by Uber has been forcing a change to the traditional model by introducing the for-hire transport business especially in densely populated urban settings. At the same time, technology innovation has allowed non-traditional competitors making serious advancements. For GM, despite its history of innovations, these forces represent uncertainty and perhaps even an existential challenge. At the beginning of 2016, GM failed to acquire Lyft, the most promising competitor of Uber and ended up in an investment of $500 million corresponding to only 9% of the company. This investment, together with other two (Maven and Cruise Automation) are the proof that GM and its CEO Mary Barra, realized how difficult would be - for a company of the size and structure like GM - to compete with agile and innovative start-up companies leveraging on data and digital technologies. Despite being the pioneer of the technology of the connected cars with its OnStar® technology, GM finds itself desperately looking for insights and customer data that would allow better understanding the changing preference of the urban customers shifting their consumption behaviour from car-ownership to shared mobility services. With declining market share in the traditional automotive space, Mary Barra is called to make a tough strategic call that should attempt to steer this giant and iconic American company into a new ecosystem where value creation is much more delocalized and where GM should attempt to take a large part in order to avoid the risk of irrelevance that the new competitors and the digitally enabled service-based economy are posing. What should Mary Barra do with Lyft and how should Lyft be integrated in the future offering of General Motors?

Digital customer service is becoming more widely adopted, but one place it falls short is in the language and phrases it uses. Many digital service platforms use words that alienate customers rather than engage them; selecting customer-centric language for chatbots and service platforms can make a significant difference in customer satisfaction.

Managers have long been obsessed with improving business processes, and a host of initiatives, such as lean production and Six Sigma, have gained traction in recent years. But a new study shows that the gains from such initiatives often fade quickly. Examining 204 lean projects launched at a European bank, the researchers found that just one-third held on to their gains after two years, and only about the same number were still showing continuous improvement. They identify several factors that can lead to sustained improvements: visible support from the board and senior leadership; consistent measuring and monitoring; communication in a clear narrative that aligns with organizational purpose; directing efforts toward pain points whose easing would clearly benefit employees; and ensuring that senior leaders act as coaches. Includes a Q&A with Helen Bevan who oversees change initiatives at England's National Health Service.

The robots are coming! But counter to popular belief, it's not just low-paying jobs that are at risk of automation. According to research by Scott Latham and Beth Humberd, predicting which jobs are vulnerable requires analyzing the type of value job holders deliver and the skills they use to deliver it. Workers must understand four paths of job evolution -and factors behind each path -if they hope to adapt.

Despite the well-documented costs of overload, many leaders still think organizations thrive under pressure. They have a lot to learn from manufacturing, where managers have adopted a "pull" system to manage task flow, improving productivity and performance. This concept can be used to prevent overload in knowledge work, too. And "visual management" techniques make it easier to apply pull thinking to a portfolio of projects by rendering nonphysical tasks tangible. Two recent changes at the Broad Institute, an MIT-affiliated biomedical and genomic research center, illustrate how.

Modest questions about how today's problems could be solved more effectively lead to applications of technology with easily foreseeable gains. But when people start asking bigger, bolder questions that challenge basic assumptions about how a problem has been framed, they open up space for breakthrough innovations. That's been the pattern in many digital realms, including cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and the internet of things.

Kaps Foods India Private Limited (Kaps), a privately held company, was one of the leading manufacturers of ice cream in Raipur, Chhattisgarh, in Central India. The company's manufacturing unit had the capacity to produce 20,000 litres of ice cream per day in 65 different stock keeping units. In December 2016, Kaps was dealing with an issue of demand and supply mismatch. Seasonality in the demand of ice cream created an imbalance between demand and supply for some variants of ice cream, and this situation has created dissatisfaction among customers. The shortage of some ice cream variants has resulted in a loss of sales and goodwill. The company's sales and marketing head became aware of the issue while reviewing customer feedback forms. He needed determine how the problem was affecting Kaps' performance and what needed to be done to solve it.

Kaps Foods India Private Limited (Kaps), a privately held company, was one of the leading manufacturers of ice cream in Raipur, Chhattisgarh, in Central India. The company’s manufacturing unit had the capacity to produce 20,000 litres of ice cream per day in 65 different stock keeping units. In December 2016, Kaps was dealing with an issue of demand and supply mismatch. Seasonality in the demand of ice cream created an imbalance between demand and supply for some variants of ice cream, and this situation has created dissatisfaction among customers. The shortage of some ice cream variants has resulted in a loss of sales and goodwill. The company’s sales and marketing head became aware of the issue while reviewing customer feedback forms. He needed determine how the problem was affecting Kaps’ performance and what needed to be done to solve it.

Spreadsheet to accompany product 8B18D021.

In this case, students assume the roles of FK Day and Dave Neiswander, leaders of the social enterprise World Bicycle Relief (WBR), which donates and sells bicycles in sub-Saharan Africa. As a social enterprise, WBR combines not-for-profit and for-profit activities. Starting as a traditional not-for-profit organization formed to donate bicycles after the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, WBR eventually added a for-profit arm to facilitate growth and reduce its dependence on donations and grants. As a result, by 2017 WBR had distributed around 400,000 bicycles, primarily to schoolgirls, entrepreneurs, and health workers. As the organization grows, its leaders are interested in optimizing operations and entering new countries in Africa. What is the optimal distribution of WBR's resources between its for-profit and not-for-profit operations? How should it define the objective of its operations: should WBR maximize its social impact or the total number of bicycles in the field? Which countries should it enter? To answer those questions, students are required to analyze the social enterprise business model. This analysis starts at the strategic level and ties into the operational level. If desired, this analysis can be followed by an Excel optimization of WBR's operations. The case contains historical data on the organization and poses questions that can be analyzed from the perspectives of a number of academic fields. It can be used in various types of courses including strategy, not-for-profit organizations, operations, and finance. The instructor materials include a prepared Excel model that can be used to make the quantitative analysis accessible to students without quantitative backgrounds, videos from WBR, and a video that shows FK Day and Dave Neiswander answering questions in the inaugural use of the case at Kellogg.

Spreadsheet supplement for case KE1090.

The effectiveness of manufacturing and service processes can be measured in many ways. Some key measures include throughput time, throughput rate, cycle time, and inventory. In this brief exercise, we define the relationships among these metrics, focusing specifically on a concept called Little's Law and distinguishing among throughput rate, throughput time, and cycle time-hence the title.

The case reveals how Booking.com has become the world's leading travel accommodation platform. The company has put online experimentation at the heart of how it designs digital experiences for its customers and partners. To unlock the potential of large-scale testing, the leadership team had to challenge conventional assumptions about culture, process, and the management of innovation.

This case series, set in June 2018, follows a student in a master's degree program in Environment and Sustainability who was invited to lead a waste audit for Innovation Works London, a non-profit organization. Case (A) introduces Innovation Works London and its need for the audits. Case (B) refers to an unforeseen event that arose just a few hours before the actual audit—the bulk of organic waste collected for the audit had been unintentionally picked up by the third-party waste hauler. In Case (C), the waste audit team considers the results of the waste audit. The team has to calculate the waste diversion rate and prepare its recommendations for improvement.

Case (B) follows Case (A), product 9B18D024, in the case series. Case (B) refers to an unforeseen event that arose just a few hours before the actual audit.