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...

Corporate executives and consumers have in recent years adopted divergent views of product quality. Several recent surveys indicate how wide the quality perception gap is: Three out of five chief executives of the country’s largest 1,300 companies said in a 1981 survey that quality is improving; only 13% said it is declining.1 Yet 49% of […]

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

A few years ago, a major manufacturing-based conglomerate asked a gifted mathematician to join its corporate staff. One of his first assignments was to design a system that senior managers could use to evaluate the operating efficiency of the company’s various divisions. He devoted many months to the assignment and also tapped the knowledge of […]

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.

Consumers' tastes are changing fast, but one things remains: they value quality, value, and inspiration in their products.

A three-part framework for boosting your organization's resilience in a volatile world.

Jefferson Pilot Financial (JPF), a life insurance and annuities firm, was looking for new ways to grow. Its top managers recognized that JPF needed to...

To gain insight into solving your organization's issues, stop and look at the numbers.

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 […]

Of late, offshoring and outsourcing have become political hot buttons--they have been conflated to mean that high-paying, white-collar jobs have been...

If people want to fix health care in the U.S., they need to set aside the prevailing myths that the system is broken or just needs to become more competitive...

Hospitals should start by taking a page out of the hospitality playbook.