Operations strategy

What you measure is what you get. Senior executives understand that their organization’s measurement system strongly affects the behavior of managers and employees. Executives also understand that traditional financial accounting measures like return-on-investment and earnings-per-share can give misleading signals for continuous improvement and innovation—activities today’s competitive environment demands. The traditional financial performance measures worked well […]

For starters, it’s not the same as operational effectiveness.

Increasingly, multinational corporations (MNCs) are pledging to procure the materials and services they need from companies committed to fair labor practices...

The U.S.-China trade war and the supply and demand shocks brought on by the Covid-19 crisis are forcing manufacturers everywhere to reassess their supply...

Artificial intelligence is transforming all sectors of the economy, but there's no reason to fear that robots will replace all human employees. In fact,...

One of the most promising applications of emerging blockchain technology is supply chain management. Blockchain--the digital record-keeping system developed...

The quality of customer service is often as important as the quality of the product. A company can evaluate its customer service by performing a customer...

For two decades progressive thinkers have argued that a more sustainable form of capitalism would arise if companies regularly measured and reported on...

An essential step in improving productivity is measuring it appropriately. But managers have trouble working with the experts who design and implement...

A framework to ensure your digital investments are driven by strategic objectives.

To today's customers, value can mean any number of things, from convenience of purchase to after-sale service and dependability. But that doesn't mean...

Paradoxically, the enduring competitive advantages in a global economy lie increasingly in local things—knowledge, relationships, and motivation that distant rivals cannot match.

Several strategies can help companies let go of outmoded assets.

Your organization will need new management expertise.

Even though it's what keeps companies operationally in shape, front-line process improvement is hard to sustain. Why? Consider the story of Technicolor....

It has to start with leadership.

In recent years a growing number of companies have expended considerable amounts of time and money to develop strategic planning skills in their profit centers and at higher organizational levels. We applaud this effort, but as we stand back and observe large and small companies alike apply this new talent and expertise, we are struck […]

Once seen as a back-office function, HR has gained importance in recent years, with more and more chief human resources officers (CHROs) serving as the...

An AI designed to do X will eventually fail to do X. Spam filters block important emails, GPS provides faulty directions, machine translations corrupt...

Would you send a half-empty truck across Europe or pay to airfreight coats to Japan twice a week? Would you move unsold items out of your shop after only...