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This case examines the unique business model of Ristorante D'O, a high end gourmet restaurant located near Milan, Italy. Founded by Chef Davide Oldani, D'O offers meals at approximately one-third the price of other Michelin starred restaurants. Oldani has made this business model profitable by making a conscious set of operating strategy choices (menu, meal design, service process, lay-out, reservation process) that reduce waste and inefficiency, while preserving quality. The case enables students to understand how cost-quality trade-offs can be altered through creative operating strategies, and sufficient data are available to analyze the operating model in depth. A second focal point of the case concerns Oldani's choices for growth. The wait list for D'O is currently 18 months. He can presumably open another D'O at a different location. At the time of the case, however, is considering opening a new restaurant in the same vicinity as D'O that would operate at an even lower price point. Case debate can center around whether this new restaurant format makes sense from a strategic point of view, and, in particular, whether the capabilities and know-how acquired in operating D'O are applicable to the new restaurant. The deeper issue in the case concerns how businesses based on the creative talent of an individual (like Chef Oldani) can grow, without losing what makes them special.

The director of a rural metropolitan water supply facility faces a complex risk management challenge. The facility uses chlorine gas in its water treatment, largely because it has determined that chlorine is the most effective treatment available, in terms of safety, cost and environmental impact. However, a security report from the Department of Homeland Security suggests that chlorine, a hazardous chemical, can be used by terrorists, both during its transport to the treatment facility and at the facility itself. The director of the water supply facility wonders whether the Department of Homeland Security made its recommendation based on an isolated risk without considering the big picture. The case provides students with an opportunity to analyse a complex sustainability-related management issue.

Supplement for case 613031. Update on progress of Microsoft's Server & Tools Business through July 2011. Satya Nadella and his team explore whether or not to support Linux on Windows Azure.

Strong urbanisation leads to mega-cities with huge environmental problems. Singapore has managed to combine strong economic and population growth with keeping the city liveable and green. There is a lot to be learned from their unique experience.

The case study focuses on risk management practices at Maryland & Virginia Milk Producers Cooperative, in particular the organization's crisis preparedness to ensure business continuity. The case provides detailed information on the dairy industry as well as the specific operations of Maryland & Virginia. It can be included in a risk management discussion within the context of supply chain management for an MBA or executive audience.

What's better than a Just Baked cupcake? Nothing really, especially when inventory decisions about the cupcakes are also so good that customers are satisfied, stores are profitable, and the company grows. This classroom exercise leads students through stepwise computations applying proven inventory management rules to make retail store stocking and material purchasing decisions effectively. Hints are provided to assure success in learning and applying the concepts laid out in WDI Publishing' Note on Managing Inventories (1-429-246), also by Eric Svaan.

Spreadsheet Supplement for UV3696

Spreadsheet Supplement for UV3696

Spreadsheet Supplement for UV6585

In 2010, a recent business graduate tries to resolve a constant bottleneck in the printing department of the family business. The two-part case discusses the issues of identifying the need for relevant information and then discusses the staff’s resistance to change and how these objections were handled and overcome. <br><br>This pair of cases seeks to identify the pressures faced by small businesses, along with the task of managing the various stakeholders, including the father-owner and the personnel on the factory shop floor.

This is a supplement to product no. 9B12E014.

iLinko is a small-to-medium enterprise (SME) based in Hong Kong. It has two major lines of business: providing business-to-business sourcing and procurement services for its customers (mainly medium-size companies located in the United States and Europe), and distributing babies and children products under the brand name Bloom. Simon May, the protagonist of the case, is the founder and CEO of iLinko. Given the rapid growth of the company, the existing ERP system can no longer satisfy the operational needs and requirements at iLinko. Simon has to choose whether to upgrade the existing ERP system or replace it with a brand-new system altogether.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. In the perennial tug of war between manufacturers and retailers, retailers seem to be winning. Today's retail industry is more concentrated than ever -in many industries and markets, a handful of retailers account for a majority of the sales. Their ability to control market access and influence consumer buying behavior means that manufacturers need retailers more than ever. And just imperatively, the authors argue, they need to understand what makes retailers tick. As retailer influence has grown, they note, power has moved downstream. For example, Wal-Mart's sale are approximately 4.5 times greater than those of its largest supplier, Procter & Gamble. Consolidation and the global scale of retailers have reduced the number of "buying points"that manufacturers can develop. Yet neither side is satisfied with the current system. Many retailers have difficulty converting trade promotion into profits. Rather than building longer-term partnerships with suppliers and nurturing store and shopper loyalty, retailers tend to compete on price and fritter away the trade support they extract from manufacturers. What can be done to improve the situation? While manufacturers are locked into large fixed investments and wedded to products and brands with long payback cycles, retailers have a variety of ways of making money. The particular approach, or the mixture of approaches, that a retailer selects defines the retailer's business model and how it differs from competitors. The article highlights four different retail business models, as exemplified by Tesco, which connects with consumers through its loyalty program; Loblaw, which relies heavily on private labels; Costco, which gets its suppliers to finance its inventory; and Wal-Mart, which focuses closely on margins.

Kirk Myers, REI's manager of corporate social responsibility (CSR), has been tasked with finding a way to optimize the organization's rental program while minimizing its environmental impacts. After looking at the data, he found that at times the rental program had major queuing problems - equipment was either not available or wait times were too long. He will have to take into consideration customer experience/service, inventory, revenue, waste, and usage implications when crafting his recommendations. Students are asked to apply the news vendor model and VUT equation to find the best solution.

Repatriation of the previously off-shored call center operations of the US Airlines was being completed in the summer of 2011. Reservation Director of the East Region considered this to be an opportunity to high quality and faster service to the "preferred customers" by establishing a preferred customer desk at the Winston-Salem Center. The headquarters has asked the director to provide an in-depth analysis of the proposal's costs and benefits before it can be approved. The wider question of the case is to cogitate whether this initiative has merit. Is it likely to provide enough advantages (both quantifiable such as shorter average wait times and non-quantifiable such as the perception by the customers of the service quality) to justify any additional personnel costs? The call centers operate 24/7 and experience varying call volumes. This causes the required number of agents to economically achieve some targeted average wait times to greatly fluctuate during each time increment (e.g., each hour). Therefore the case, more narrowly, focuses on the challenges of (1) the fundamental trade-off between wait times and agent utilization; and (2) scheduling of the start times of the standard 8-hour shifts to provide adequate coverage during each period. The Instructor's manual provides extensive analyses based on multiserver queuing models and linear programming of these technical issues. In addition, the case provides rich opportunities to discuss human resource strategies and their role in securing competitive advantage.

Quadrant Homes, a subsidiary of Fortune 500 Weyerhaeuser Company's Real Estate Division, had gained renown for its lean-oriented business model. Starting with a major overhaul in 1996, Quadrant built a formidable operating system that effectively served the needs of first-time home buyers in the Puget Sound region of Washington State, on the Northwest coast of the U.S. The operating system, built on a solid employee culture of operational excellence, produced partly customized, build-to-order homes using an "even-flow" process that delivered on Quadrant's value proposition, "More House, Less Money." Between 1996 and 2007, customer referrals more than quadrupled, market share expanded ten-fold, net margin per house had tripled, and the company's revenues and profits had soared. Quadrant's fortunes changed dramatically when the housing bust hit the Seattle area in 2007. Risk-averse, first-time home buyers pulled out of the market or gravitated toward foreclosed or distressed properties at bargain prices. Additionally, the preferences of the market had shifted away from Quadrant's rather bland-looking, boxy houses toward more customization and differentiation. In reading and discussing the case, students are challenged to consider what led Quadrant temporarily down the wrong path, and how it can reinvent its value discipline and supporting operating system in light of new insights about customer preferences and economic factors.

A problem set to review the concepts of continuous review inventory systems. These problems can be assigned for additional practice in calculating order quantities, inventories, and relevant costs. This can be used with the notes "Managing Inventories: Determining Order Quantity" (UVA-OM-1395) and "Managing Inventories: The Reorder Point System" (UVA-OM-1394).

Spreadsheet supplement for case 613065.