557 Posts Found

The ways leading companies manage time—in production, in new product development and introduction, in sales and distribution—represent the most powerful new sources of competitive advantage.

Editor’s Note: This is a classic HBR article that was assigned reading when I was a student. It has held up pretty well 35 years on.

Content: Article | Author: George Stalk Jr. | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Operations, Strategy

In manufacturing, costs fall into two categories: those that respond to volume or scale and those that are driven by variety. Scale-related costs decline as volume increases, usually falling 15% to 25% per unit each time volume doubles. Variety-related costs, on the other hand, reflect the costs of complexity in manufacturing: setup, materials handling, inventory, and many of the overhead costs of a factory. In … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: George Stalk Jr. | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Finance, Management, Operations

Today’s new-generation companies compete with flexible manufacturing and rapid-response systems, expanding variety and increasing innovation. A company that builds its strategy on this cycle is a more powerful competitor than one with a traditional strategy based on low wages, scale, or focus. These older, cost-based strategies require managers to do whatever is necessary to drive down costs: move production to or source from a low-wage … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: George Stalk Jr. | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Operations, Strategy

Integrated business planning is a well-known process, particularly among supply chain leaders. But in most companies, P&L owners are missing out.

Content: Article | Authors: Ali Sankur, Elena Dumitrescu, Ketan Shah, Matt Jochim | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Operations

The leading companies are harnessing the power of data to lessen the impact of inflation on their business and maintain profit margins.

Content: Article | Authors: Cristobal Lowery, Jean-Paul Savelkoul, Remko de Bruijn, Roger van Engelen | Source: Kearney | Subjects: Finance, Operations

Sunil Chopra describes how looking at combinations of product and channel through the lens of return on invested capital (ROIC) allows retailers to design omni-channel portfolios that align their products, service offerings, and pricing. By using each channel to improve invested capital turns or broaden profit margin, these portfolios increase the company’s value. 

Content: Article | Author: Sunil Chopra | Source: Management and Business Review (MBR) | Subjects: Industry Specific, Management, Marketing / Sales, Operations

New tools that help pinpoint complexity’s cost—and where it comes from—can help companies make better tradeoffs in managing product portfolios.

Authors: Alessandro Faure Ragani, Bikramjit Chaudhury, Ruth Heuss, Thorsten Schleyer | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Finance, Operations

In the current model of corporate capitalism, each company is treated as an economic island to be optimized individually. While this simplifies management and accountability, it masks the extent of economic and social interdependence between different stakeholders. In contrast, resilience is a property of systems: an individual company’s resilience means little if its supply base, customer base, or the social systems upon which it depends … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Kevin Whitaker, Martin Reeves | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Capitalism, Economics, Management, Operations

Online fakers are coming after everybody—but even the small and scrappy can fight back.

Content: Article | Author: Jennifer Alsever | Source: Inc. Magazine | Subjects: Intellectual Property, Legal, Operations

The age of the insular R&D organization is over. To serve as a company’s innovation engine, R&D strategy needs to be equipped for today’s fast-moving world.

Content: Article | Authors: Erik Roth, Joshua Katz, Philipp Ernst, Tom Brennan | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Operations

Optimizing service after the sale in the world of physical goods can have a significant impact on reducing field service costs.

Content: Article | Authors: Ben Henkes, Colin Glasgow, Jim Pearce, Sumeet Ladsaongikar | Source: Kearney | Subjects: Customer Related, Operations

Make or buy? To answer this classic manufacturing question, leading companies avoid the temptation to “feed the beast.” Instead, they focus on their core competencies and keep their long-term strategies in mind.

Content: Article | Authors: Fidel Tamayo, Patrick Van den Bossche | Source: Kearney | Subjects: Operations, Strategy

Kearney offers nine ways to interact with suppliers, identifying formulas that characterize true supplier relationship management.

Content: Article | Authors: Michael F. Strohmer, Mike Hales | Source: Kearney | Subject: Operations

Jaume Ribera breaks down the life cycle of a crisis into five stages and explores the challenges and opportunities each stage presents.

Content: Article | Author: Jaume Ribera | Source: IESE Insight | Subjects: Management, Operations

Some organizations worry that fostering innovation might jeopardize safety by introducing change, which many see as a source of risk. Our results, however, highlight the significance of line ownership: in our experience, one of the most effective bulwarks against accidents is the use of “near miss” programs, which encourage employees to identify hazardous situations and propose solutions before safety is jeopardized. Engaging employees in the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Brooke Weddle, Jean-Benoît Grégoire Rousseau, Randy Lim | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Operations

New automation techniques can provide the first step toward continuous, tech-enabled redesign of critical operations—forming an intuitive ops-to-tech cycle in which tech improves ops, and vice versa.

Content: Article | Authors: Allen Weinberg, David Taylor, Federico Berruti | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: IT / Technology / E-Business, Operations

The elements of a good performance-management system are simple, but integrating them into a business’s fundamental operating system is more difficult than it seems.

Content: Article | Authors: Frédéric Gascon, John Douglas, Raffaele Carpi | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Operations

While IoT-enabled advanced analytics could be worth trillions to manufacturers, turning insights into outcomes requires more than just the right technology.

Content: Article | Authors: Mark Patel, Richard Kelly, Subu Narayanan | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: IT / Technology / E-Business, Operations

Business needs to raise productivity more than ever. Thanks to innovations in digitization and analytics, four new methodologies can yield the productivity breakthroughs organizations need.

Content: Article | Authors: Kevin Speicher, Mercedes Goenaga, Philipp Radtke, Rafael Westinner | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Operations

Caitlin Kalinowski is a master of the prototyping process, with a deep understanding of where, when and how changes should be slotted in, from the first iteration to the last. It’s made her a highly sought-after engineer in Silicon Valley. In this exclusive interview, Kalinowski discusses how and why you must define your non-negotiables before starting to build prototypes. She dives deep on specific approaches … [ Read more ]

Content: Thought Leader | Author: Caitlin Kalinowski | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Management, Operations | Companies: Apple, Oculus