Operations and supply chain management

Twelve lessons on analyzing data, communicating information, and protecting your employees.

Standardization has been a powerful strategy in consumer markets, but it's reached the point of diminishing returns. And diversity is not the only chink...

Lessons from the head of McKinsey's negotiation practice.

The federal government can and should play a much bigger role in helping American companies regain the lead in manufacturing. We need to invest a commensurate amount of federal R&D dollars in advanced manufacturing technologies as we do in other areas of science, technology, and engineering. The last administration created an assistant secretary for manufacturing […]

Breakthrough innovations--not just steady improvements--in operations can destroy competitors and shake up entire industries. Just look at Dell, Toyota,...

Now that providing services is more lucrative than making products, the old foundations for success in manufacturing are crumbling. Smart manufacturers are creating new business models to capture profits at the customer’s end of the value chain.

These four strategies can give you a competitive edge.

The company realized that controlling its future meant controlling its supply chain.

According to Wickham Skinner (“What Matters to Manufacturing,” HBR January–February 1988), too many managers now approach production difficulties with “a menu of textbook techniques”—CIM, for example—when they should be thinking through the same old questions: What is my business? Where is the market? What machines and flexibilities do I really need? With Skinner’s strictures in […]

It’s a victory of making stuff over making markets.

In 1998, the “Save Santa” incident marked a turning point.

Firms with large facilities need more control over their power.

And what companies can do about it.

In my consulting and research I’ve seen many companies launch process improvement programs such as Total Quality Management, Business Reengineering, Lean, and Six Sigma. Many got significant benefits, including lower costs, faster time-to-market, and better customer experiences. But after one round of improvement, they gave up and let their organization get flabby again. Organizations, like […]

“You can’t be serious!” Mike Trail, the president and fourth-generation owner of Trail Manufacturing, stared at five older men standing uncomfortably in his small office. “I’m afraid we are, Mike.” Sandy Mulder, the most senior of the five, was polite but firm. “We won’t switch over to the new equipment. We want to continue to […]

Changes in tools, teams, regulations, and markets are putting sustainability in the hands of the finance department.

In this fictional case, a customer experience manager is torn between loyalty to her family and to her employer after she gets inside information from...

Few people outside the supply chain function used to care where products came from. Nowadays, everyone from company leaders to interest groups to consumers...

But lean management can help.