Operations
STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS — Supply chains—the string of players involved in making goods from the procurement of raw materials to the consumer end product—have traditionally operated with gross inefficiencies resulting from what they don’t know. How can the producer of a computer chip...
STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS — Most companies in the fashion industry are firmly entrenched in a business model that involves outsourcing production and distributing products through cheaper, "slow boat" channels. Research at Stanford Graduate School of Business, however, suggests that...
STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS—"The Minority Report," Steven Spielberg's sci-fi movie release in 2002 has the following scene. John Anderton (Tom Cruise), after having eyeballs replaced to escape police detection, walks into an apparel store (the Gap). The camera in the store scans his eyes...
STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS—It's a simple fact of human nature: The minute people fear they may not be able to get their "stuff," they start hoarding whatever's available. On the industry level, notes Stanford professor Hau Lee, a similar dynamic can occur throughout a supply chain. The...
STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS—Global business, retail innovations, and advances in information technology have had a huge impact on supply chain management. These changes are driving retailers and suppliers to share more information than ever before in order to deliver goods faster and keep...
Back in the 1970s, corporations competed on quality. In the eighties, the quality effort gave way to the quest for lean manufacturing. In the nineties and beyond, business is increasingly global, product variety is growing, and production cycles continue to shorten. "Everything is changing rapidly...
STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS—If you ask Seungjin Whang about the research and colleague Hau Lee do in supply chain management, he is likely to answer with a story about diapers. Babies consume diapers at a relatively steady rate, he will tell you. Month to month, the number of babies and...
STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS—When an "insignificant" flaw was found on Intel's Pentium chip in late 1994, Intel didn't take it overly seriously —small flaws are considered routine with the release of a new microprocessor. What a mistake! As professor of management Robert Burgelman and...
It was the wildest of wild rides. In mid-January of 2007, crude oil futures on the NYMEX Exchange closed at $52 a barrel. Eighteen months later, a relentless climb had pushed prices to an all-time, inflation-adjusted high of $145 a barrel. World markets panicked, and analysts predicted that we'd...
STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS—Those who work in the most complex manufacturing environments have the most to gain from the use of problem-solving teams, according to a recently published study. As the United States concentrates its manufacturing base, workers are more likely to be...