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Teaching Resources Library

Operations Management Case Studies

Browse Course Material

Course info, instructors.

• Prof. Charles H. Fine
• Prof. Tauhid Zaman

Departments

• Sloan School of Management

As Taught In

• Mathematics
• Social Science

Introduction to Operations Management

Cases and readings.

The required readings for this course include:

• Cases listed in the Cases/Readings column below
• Goldratt, Eliyah M., and Jeff Cox. The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement . 2nd revised ed. North River Press, 1992. ISBN: 9780884270614.
• [MSD] = Cachon, Gerard, and Christian Terwiesch. Matching Supply with Demand: An Introduction to Operations Management . 3rd ed. McGraw-Hill, 2012. ISBN: 9780073525204.

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Operations Management

Browse operations management learning materials including case studies, simulations, and online courses. Introduce core concepts and real-world challenges to create memorable learning experiences for your students.

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• Capacity Planning
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Operations Management Simulations

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Operations Management Cases with Female Protagonists

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Operations Management Cases with Protagonists of Color

Discover operations management cases featuring protagonists of color that have been recommended by Harvard Business School faculty.

Foundational Operations Management Readings

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Operations strategy

• Business management
• Operations and supply chain management
• Supply chain management

How Technology Creates Jobs for Less Educated Workers

• James Bessen
• March 21, 2014

Getting Control of Just-in-Time

• Uday Karmarkar
• From the September–October 1989 Issue

Improving Customer Satisfaction with Simple Analytics

• Piyanka Jain
• November 17, 2015

The Case for a Pan-American Manufacturing Ecosystem

• Bindiya Vakil
• Dale Rogers
• June 14, 2021

Raising Wages Is the Right Thing to Do, and Doesn’t Have to Be Bad for Your Bottom Line

• April 18, 2019

Speed Up Your Product Development Without Losing Control

• July 15, 2014

The CEO of Anglo American on Getting Serious About Safety

• Cynthia Carroll
• From the June 2012 Issue

Understanding Fear of Process Improvement

• September 27, 2012

How Multinationals Should Be Planning for Brexit

• Mark McNamee
• Athanasia Kokkinogeni
• May 15, 2018

Coupling Strategy to Operating Plans

• John M. Hobbs
• Donald F. Heany
• From the May 1977 Issue

Group Technology and Productivity

• Nancy L. Hyer
• Urban Wemmerlov
• From the July 1984 Issue

The Internet of Things Will Change Your Company, Not Just Your Products

• October 24, 2014

In Search of Global Leaders

• Stephen Green
• Fred Hassan
• Jeffrey Immelt
• Michael Marks
• Daniel Meiland
• From the August 2003 Issue

Strong Patient-Provider Relationships Drive Healthier Outcomes

• Erin E. Sullivan
• Andy Ellner MD
• October 09, 2015

Putting the Enterprise Into the Enterprise System

• Thomas H. Davenport
• From the July–August 1998 Issue

The Department of Mobility

• Rex Runzheimer
• From the November 2005 Issue

Going Abroad in Search of Higher Productivity at Home

• Laurence Capron
• Olivier Bertrand
• From the June 2014 Issue

Midsized Companies Can't Afford Operational Glitches

• Robert Sher
• April 25, 2014

Hospitals Can’t Improve Without Better Management Systems

• John S. Toussaint
• October 21, 2015

Inventory Management in the Age of Big Data

• Morris A. Cohen
• June 24, 2015

Bridges Ventures

• V. Kasturi Rangan
• Sarah Appleby
• October 21, 2013

SunnyBee (A): The Entrepreneurial Decision

• Jennifer Ellis
• Ruben Mancha
• January 01, 2018

Australian Paper Manufacturers (A)

• David M. Upton
• Joshua D. Margolis
• December 07, 1990

Dachser (A): Intelligent Logistics

• Benoit F. Leleux
• January 24, 2022

The School of Management: Handling Admission Leakage

• Sourabh Bhattacharya
• Kalyan C. Chejarla
• December 01, 2022

Bluemercury: Leading High Growth Businesses

• Lynda M. Applegate
• July 21, 2017

AGC Inc. in 2019: "Your Dreams, Our Challenge"

• Ulrike Schaede
• Masanori Kato
• Charles O'Reilly
• November 25, 2019
• Richard G. Hamermesh
• Alisa Zalosh
• November 30, 2012

Argo: The CIA's Mission Impossible in Iran

• Amy C. Edmondson
• Jeremy Tachau
• April 22, 2013

Tale of Two Electronic Components Distributors

• Ananth Raman
• Bharat P. Rao
• February 04, 1997

Purity Steel Corporation, 2012

• Robert Simons
• Antonio Davila
• March 04, 1997

Jebsen & Jessen Family Enterprise: A Hong From the Cold

• Benoit Leleux
• October 03, 2017

Kangaroo Tail Winery Limited (A)

• Graeme Rankine
• August 01, 2017

HBR Insights Web3, Crypto, and Blockchain Collection (3 Books)

• Harvard Business Review
• December 05, 2023

Marine Stewardship Council (A): Is a Joint Venture Possible Between "Suits and Sandals?"

• Ulrich Steger
• George Radler
• January 01, 2000

General Electric vs. Westinghouse in Large Turbine Generators (B)

• Michael E. Porter
• January 01, 1980

Health-Tech Strategy at KG Hospital Part A: Identification and Prioritization of Key Focus Areas

• Vijaya Sunder M
• Meghna Raman
• January 09, 2022

Australian Paper Manufacturers (B)

Cradle-to-cradle design at herman miller: moving toward environmental sustainability.

• Deishin Lee
• Lionel Bony
• May 30, 2007

Teradata Data Mart Consolidation Return on Investment at GST

• Mark Jeffery
• Robert J. Sweeney
• Robert J. Davis
• January 01, 2006

The CIO Balancing Act: Operations and Business Innovation

• Khalid Kark
• September 29, 2017

Takeover of the Norton Co., Spreadsheet Supplement

• Thomas R. Piper
• Kenton W. Elderkin
• June 28, 1991

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Operations strategy case studies

Customer operations.

A leading US non-profit health insurer focused on service as a key differentiator. It wanted to gain insight into current operational performance, and develop customer-centric capabilities like self-service and digital competency. PwC's Strategy& was engaged to evaluate and address gaps in customer and member engagement.

Leveraging our health insurance expertise, proprietary market research databases, and best practices to help the client develop its differentiated customer-centric capabilities, we identified quick wins included outsourcing of manual activities, automation of macros/scripting, and standardization of call center work-from-home policies. We delivered a plan to enhance workforce management, consolidate provider data claim, and move to pre-pay policy. Additional recommendations addressed network rationalization, timely issuance of ID cards, and reducing SG&A expenses.

The project identified $25M investment in provider engagement, flexible network design, personalized member service, and real-time enrollment to achieve the desired differentiating capabilities.

Innovation and product development

A global chemicals specialty company with multiple business units and several existing embedded R&D teams was challenged by stagnating growth in difficult market conditions and the client was seeking to reinvigorate the portfolio. The client sought to consolidate R&D capabilities and establish a corporate innovation function to coordinate and drive its long-term R&D agenda and drive growth.

Strategy& was asked to design the innovation operating model, define the collaboration with business units, and develop a concept for R&D partnerships and venturing to drive growth.

We established a target operating model, refocused product innovation into clusters and developed a venturing approach. The client experienced a significant upswing in R&D productivity, new record numbers of patents filed, and breakthroughs innovations in a number of focus areas. Overall, improved R&D coherence led to 13% direct top line growth and 15% EBITDA improvement.

Strategic supply management

A global lighting company with over $5B sales revenue across more than 130 countries was faced with tremendous market disruptions resulting from the transition from traditional lighting to LED. To successfully play in this significantly different market, the company sold off its traditional business and refocused on the technically driven, fast-cycled LED business. To enable this, the client had to adopt new business models. Within this context, the procurement function had to undergo a major transition towards strategic supply management to effectively support the businesses going forward.

Strategy& supported the client in identifying the new requirements resulting from the changed business models, developing the procurement transformation program based on prioritized 4-6 focus areas (e.g. SRM, Supplier and Innovation Scouting), including appropriate KPIs, and designing a comprehensive change management concept and roadmap to ensure engagement and buy-in from the client team.

The transformation delivered significantly improved service levels for the BUs based on nine key strategic supply management capabilities and an adapted operating model with an improved split of roles and responsibilities between corporate headquarters and business units.

Competitive manufacturing

A global product company with $10B sales revenue across more than 130 countries was suffering from a highly complex manufacturing footprint which was not aligned with the client’s main markets. The client was losing sales and profitability due to high order fulfillment cycle times, high manufacturing costs, and low productivity performance in its key operations.

Strategy& designed the global manufacturing footprint strategy based on clearly defined customer and market requirements. As a consequence, the team agreed to realign the operations footprint from 23 to 15 operations by implementing a more balanced global footprint closer to key customers and/or distribution centers.

The transformation delivered shorter order fulfillment cycle times while simultaneously reducing manufacturing costs by up to 10% and improving overall productivity and flexibility. These results led to a gross margin improvement by 5%.

Capital assets

A leading oil field services and equipment company’s financial performance was lagging its peers, and the company had committed to a 3% improvement in North American net margin. Management believed there was an opportunity to improve the effectiveness of their >$1B equipment maintenance spend, but was unclear on where and how to achieve savings.

Strategy& helped the client pinpoint inefficiencies in their maintenance operating model, shifting from a highly reactive and siloed operation to an integrated team using advanced techniques to deliver maintenance when and where needed based on data. The changes were substantial as the client reorganized to break down functional barriers and create a maintenance process focused on customer performance.

Results were impressive — the maintenance transformation program was implemented at the top 80% of locations by revenue, resulting in a ~2% boost to net margins. It also drove a 20% reduction in maintenance cost, 50% reduction in maintenance related downtime, and improved customer service.

General and administrative (G&A) operations

The securities servicing division of a global banking group sought to address business challenges like reduced productivity, sub-optimal operating model for its Center of Excellence (CoE), lack of process standardization, cost escalation, process fragmentation, and duplication. Strategy& was asked to help in accelerating execution and benefits delivery through process optimization, offshoring and redesign of operating model.

Strategy& developed initial hypothesis through a detailed current state analysis, using both quantitative and qualitative tools, and conducted workshops to identify quick win opportunities. We proposed a redesigned operating model for the CoEs, and suggested in-depth implementation plan to drive the changes.

The project identified potential cost saving of $10M per annum and recommended lean FTE allocation across locations. The project also identified opportunities to achieve process efficiency and provided detailed target state structure of the CoE, including team size, shift patterns, and processes performed.

Enterprise-wide operational excellence

A leading tier-1 automotive supplier for the production and processing of rubber, plastics and metal with $680MM. sales revenue faced significant growth rates, but structures, process efficiency and financial performance did not follow accordingly and significant refinancing/cash flow complications evolved.

Strategy& was tasked with reshaping the company starting from product-market-strategy, developing the organizational structure and optimizing the entire process and operations landscape. An overall restructuring concept based on two pillars was developed: 1) Urgent short-term actions focusing on firefighting to ensure customer satisfaction and 2) sustainable long-term measures facilitating the optimization of the company’s footprint, product creation process, sales initiatives as well as lean production initiatives and the definition of an overall production system.

Continued success of these measures was ensured through the implementation of a common reporting structure and escalation process to track progress and define counter measures in case of deviations. The highly successful project identified cost saving initiatives worth more than $135MM. and had the client achieving EBIT margins of 6-8% during the project.

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Operations Management

A primary challenge for governments and organizations is to manage their resources as efficiently as possible. The teaching cases in this section challenge students to become decisive managers through a host of topics including budgeting and finance, infrastructure, regulatory policy, and transportation.

Mayoral Transitions: How Three Mayors Stepped into the Role, in Their Own Words

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New mayors face distinct challenges as they assume office. In these vignettes depicting three types of mayoral transitions, explore how new leaders can make the most of their first one hundred days by asserting their authority and...

Shoring Up Child Protection in Massachusetts: Commissioner Spears & the Push to Go Fast

Publication Date: July 13, 2023

 In January 2015, when incoming Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker chose Linda Spears as his new Commissioner of the Department of Children and Families, he was looking for a reformer. Following the grizzly death of a child under DCF...

OneBlood and COVID-19: Building an Agile Supply Chain Epilogue

Publication Date: October 20, 2021

This epilogue accompanies HKS Case 2233.0. The blood supply chain is under pressure from COVID-19. How should the 3rd largest blood bank in the US, OneBlood, respond? Is adopting an agile supply chain philosophy an effective...

OneBlood and COVID-19: Building an Agile Supply Chain

The blood supply chain is under pressure from COVID-19. How should the 3rd largest blood bank in the US, OneBlood, respond? Is adopting an agile supply chain philosophy an effective approach? The case provides an overview of the...

“A Difficult Lady”: Shutting Down Pollution in Kampala, Uganda Practitioner Guide

Publication Date: October 15, 2021

This practitioner guide accompanies HKS Case 2231.0. In 2011, sanitation and environmental management expert Judith Tumusiime joined the Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA), where she and KCCA Executive Director Jennifer Musisi quickly became...

“A Difficult Lady”: Shutting Down Pollution in Kampala, Uganda

In 2011, sanitation and environmental management expert Judith Tumusiime joined the Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA), where she and KCCA Executive Director Jennifer Musisi quickly became a dynamic team, working together to execute a mandate...

“Pressing the Right Buttons”: Jennifer Musisi for New City Leadership Epilogue

Publication Date: September 9, 2020

This epilogue accompanies HKS Case 2186.0. Jennifer Musisi, a career civil servant most recently with the Uganda Revenue Authority, was appointed by President Museveni as executive director (equivalent to city manager) of a new governing body...

“Pressing the Right Buttons”: Jennifer Musisi for New City Leadership Practitioner Guide

This practitioner guide accompanies HKS Case 2186.0. Jennifer Musisi, a career civil servant most recently with the Uganda Revenue Authority, was appointed by President Museveni as executive director (equivalent to city manager) of a new...

“Pressing the Right Buttons”: Jennifer Musisi for New City Leadership

Jennifer Musisi, a career civil servant most recently with the Uganda Revenue Authority, was appointed by President Museveni as executive director (equivalent to city manager) of a new governing body for Uganda’s capital, the Kampala...

The “Garbage Lady” Cleans Up Kampala: Turning Quick Wins into Lasting Change Practitioner Guide

Publication Date: June 30, 2020

This practitioner guide accompanies HKS Case 2181.0. In 2011, at the newly formed Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA), Judith Tumusiime, an impassioned technocrat who prided herself on operating outside of politics, was charged with...

The “Garbage Lady” Cleans Up Kampala: Turning Quick Wins into Lasting Change (Epilogue)

This epilogue accompanies HKS Case 2181.0. In 2011, at the newly formed Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA), Judith Tumusiime, an impassioned technocrat who prided herself on operating outside of politics, was charged with transforming a...

The “Garbage Lady” Cleans Up Kampala: Turning Quick Wins into Lasting Change

In 2011, at the newly formed Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA), Judith Tumusiime, an impassioned technocrat who prided herself on operating outside of politics, was charged with transforming a “filthy city” to a clean, habitable,...

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Top 40 Most Popular Case Studies of 2021

Two cases about Hertz claimed top spots in 2021's Top 40 Most Popular Case Studies

Two cases on the uses of debt and equity at Hertz claimed top spots in the CRDT’s (Case Research and Development Team) 2021 top 40 review of cases.

Hertz (A) took the top spot. The case details the financial structure of the rental car company through the end of 2019. Hertz (B), which ranked third in CRDT’s list, describes the company’s struggles during the early part of the COVID pandemic and its eventual need to enter Chapter 11 bankruptcy. 

The success of the Hertz cases was unprecedented for the top 40 list. Usually, cases take a number of years to gain popularity, but the Hertz cases claimed top spots in their first year of release. Hertz (A) also became the first ‘cooked’ case to top the annual review, as all of the other winners had been web-based ‘raw’ cases.

Besides introducing students to the complicated financing required to maintain an enormous fleet of cars, the Hertz cases also expanded the diversity of case protagonists. Kathyrn Marinello was the CEO of Hertz during this period and the CFO, Jamere Jackson is black.

Sandwiched between the two Hertz cases, Coffee 2016, a perennial best seller, finished second. “Glory, Glory, Man United!” a case about an English football team’s IPO made a surprise move to number four.  Cases on search fund boards, the future of malls,  Norway’s Sovereign Wealth fund, Prodigy Finance, the Mayo Clinic, and Cadbury rounded out the top ten.

Other year-end data for 2021 showed:

• Online “raw” case usage remained steady as compared to 2020 with over 35K users from 170 countries and all 50 U.S. states interacting with 196 cases.
• Fifty four percent of raw case users came from outside the U.S..
• The Yale School of Management (SOM) case study directory pages received over 160K page views from 177 countries with approximately a third originating in India followed by the U.S. and the Philippines.
• Twenty-six of the cases in the list are raw cases.
• A third of the cases feature a woman protagonist.
• Orders for Yale SOM case studies increased by almost 50% compared to 2020.
• The top 40 cases were supervised by 19 different Yale SOM faculty members, several supervising multiple cases.

CRDT compiled the Top 40 list by combining data from its case store, Google Analytics, and other measures of interest and adoption.

All of this year’s Top 40 cases are available for purchase from the Yale Management Media store .

And the Top 40 cases studies of 2021 are:

1.   Hertz Global Holdings (A): Uses of Debt and Equity

2.   Coffee 2016

3.   Hertz Global Holdings (B): Uses of Debt and Equity 2020

4.   Glory, Glory Man United!

5.   Search Fund Company Boards: How CEOs Can Build Boards to Help Them Thrive

6.   The Future of Malls: Was Decline Inevitable?

7.   Strategy for Norway's Pension Fund Global

8.   Prodigy Finance

9.   Design at Mayo

10. Cadbury

11. City Hospital Emergency Room

13. Volkswagen

14. Marina Bay Sands

15. Shake Shack IPO

16. Mastercard

17. Netflix

18. Ant Financial

19. AXA: Creating the New CR Metrics

20. IBM Corporate Service Corps

21. Business Leadership in South Africa's 1994 Reforms

22. Alternative Meat Industry

23. Children's Premier

24. Khalil Tawil and Umi (A)

25. Palm Oil 2016

26. Teach For All: Designing a Global Network

27. What's Next? Search Fund Entrepreneurs Reflect on Life After Exit

28. Searching for a Search Fund Structure: A Student Takes a Tour of Various Options

30. Project Sammaan

31. Commonfund ESG

32. Polaroid

33. Connecticut Green Bank 2018: After the Raid

34. FieldFresh Foods

35. The Alibaba Group

36. 360 State Street: Real Options

37. Herman Miller

38. AgBiome

39. Nathan Cummings Foundation

40. Toyota 2010

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The case is centered around the timeline of the Telangana graduates’ MLC elections 2021, which were held against the backdrop of a known unknown: the COVID-19 pandemic. The electoral officials had to be mindful of the numerous security protocols and complexities involved in implementing the election process in such uncertain times. They had to incorporate additional steps and plan for contingencies to mitigate risks while executing the election process. Halfway through the election planning process, it became clear that the number of voters and candidates was unprecedentedly large. This unexpected development necessitated a revision of the prior plan for conducting the elections. Shashank Goel, Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), and M. Satyavani, Deputy CEO, were architecting the plan for conducting the elections with an unexpectedly large number of voters and candidates under pandemic-induced disruptions. Goel was also reflecting on how to develop contingency plans for these elections, given the uncertainty produced by unforeseen external factors and the associated risks. Although he had the mandate to conduct free and fair elections within the stipulated timelines and was assured that the required resources would be provided, several factors had to be considered. According to the constitutional guidelines for the graduates' MLC elections, qualified and registered graduate voters could cast their vote by ranking candidates preferentially. Paper ballots had to be used because electronic voting machines (EVMs) could not handle preferential voting. The scale and magnitude of the elections necessitated jumbo ballot boxes. To manage the process, the number of polling stations had to be increased, and manpower had to be trained. Further, the presence of healthcare workers to ensure the safety of voters and the deployed staff was imperative. The Telangana CEO’s office had to meet the increased logistical and technical requirements and ensure high voting turnouts while executing the election process.

Postponing the election was not an option for the ECI from the standpoint of the legal code of conduct. The Telangana CEO's office prepared a revised election plan. The project plan was amended to incorporate the need for additional resources and logistical support to execute the election process. As the efforts of the staff were maximized effectively, the elections could be conducted smoothly and transparently although a large number of candidates were in the fray.

Teaching and Learning Objectives:

The key case objectives are to enable students to:

• Appreciate the importance of effective project management, planning, and execution in public administration against the backdrop of uncertainties and complexities.
• Understand the importance of risk identification, risk planning, and prioritization.
• Learn strategies to manage various project risks in a real-life situation.
• Identify the characteristics of effective leadership in times of crisis and the key takeaways from such scenarios

The case is designed to be used in courses on Nonprofit Operations Management, Data Analytics, Six Sigma, and Business Process Excellence/Improvement in MBA or Executive MBA programs. It is suitable for teaching students about the common problem of lower rates of volunteerism in nonprofit organizations. Further, the case study helps present the importance and application of inferential statistics (data analytics) to identify the impact of various factors on the problem (effect). The case is set in early 2021 when Shefali Sharma, the Strategy and Learning Manager with Teach For India (TFI), faced a few challenging questions from a professor at the Indian School of Business (ISB) during her presentation at an industry gathering in Hyderabad, India. Sharma was concerned about the low matriculation rate of TFI fellows, despite the rigorous recruitment, selection, and matriculation (RSM) process. A mere 50-60% matriculation rate was not a commensurate return for an investment of INR 6.5 million and the massive effort put into the RSM process. In 2017, Sharma organized focused informative and experiential events to motivate candidates to join the fellowship, but it was not very clear if these events impacted the TFI matriculation rate. After the industry gathering at ISB, Sharma followed up with the professor to seek his guidance in performing data analytics on the matriculation data. Sharma wondered if inferential data analysis could help her understand which demographic factors and events impact the matriculation rate.

Learning Objective

• Illustrate the importance of inferential statistics as a decision support system in resolving business problems
• Formulating and solving a hypothesis testing problem for attribute (discrete) data
• Visually depicting the flow of work across different stages of a process

In response to the uncontrollable second wave of COVID-19 in the south Indian state of Telangana in April 2021, a few like-minded social activists in the capital city of Hyderabad came together to establish a 100-bed medical care center to treat COVID-19 patients. The project was named Ashray. Dr. Chinnababu Sunkavalli (popularly known as Chinna) was the project manager of Project Ashray. In addition to the inherent inadequacy of hospital beds to accommodate the growing number of COVID- 19 patients till March 2021, the city faced a sudden spike of infections in April that worsened the situation. Consequently, the occupancy in government and private hospitals in Hyderabad increased by 485% and 311%, respectively, from March to April. According to a prediction model, Chinna knew that hospital beds would be exhausted in several parts of the city in the next few days. The Project Ashray team was concerned about the situation. The team met on April 26, 2021, to schedule the project to establish the medical care center within the next 10 days. The case is suitable for teaching students how to approach the scheduling problem of a time- constrained project systematically. It helps as a pedagogical aid in teaching management concepts such as project visualization, estimating project duration, float, and project laddering or activity splitting, and tools such as network diagrams, critical path method, and crashing. The case exposes students to a real-time problem-solving approach under uncertainty and crises and the critical role of NGOs in supporting the governments. Alongside the Project Management and Operations Management courses, other courses like Managerial decision-making in nonprofit organizations, Health care delivery, and healthcare operations could also find support from this case.

Learning Objectives:

To learn: Time-constrained projects and associated scheduling problems Project visualization using network diagrams Activity sequencing and converting sequential activities to parallel activities Critical path method (early start, early finish, late start, late finish, forward pass, backward pass, and float) to estimate a project's overall duration Project laddering to reduce the project duration wherever possible Project crashing using linear programming

The case goes on to describe the enormous challenges involved in building the 4.94 km long Bogibeel Bridge in the North Eastern Region (NER) of India. When it was finally commissioned in 2018, it was hailed as a marvel of engineering. With two rail lines and a two-lane road over it, the bridge spanned the mighty Brahmaputra river. The Bogibeel Bridge was India's longest and Asia's second-longest road and rail bridge with fully-welded bridge technology that met European codes and welding standards. The interstate connectivity provided by the bridge enabled important socio-economic developments in the NER that included improved logistics and transportation, the growth of medical and educational facilities, higher employment, and the rise of international trade and tourism. While the outcomes of the project were significant, the efforts that went into constructing the Bogibeel Bridge were equally so. This case study is designed to teach the importance of effective risk planning in project management. Further, the case introduces students to earned value analysis and project oversight in managing large projects. The case centers on Indian Railways' need to quickly discover why the Bogibeel project was not going according to plan. The case also serves as a resource to teach public operations management where the focus is on projects and operations that result in socio-economic outcomes.

• Appreciate the importance of risk planning and risk prioritization and learn strategies to manage various project risks
• Understand earned value management (EVM) and the associated metrics and calculations for project evaluation on time and cost schedules.
• Identify social impact outcomes in public/infrastructure projects.

Access to clean water is so critical for development and survival that the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal number 6 (SDG-6) was to ensure availability and sustained management of water and sanitation. The World Health Organization (WHO) in 2006 estimated that 97 million Indians lacked clean and safe water. Fluoride and total dissolvable solids (TDS) in drinking water were dangerously high at many parts of rural India, with adverse impacts. On the other hand, buying clean drinking water from commercial vendors at market rates was not a realistic alternative, a costly recurring expense that much of India's rural population could not afford. The case tracks the efforts of Huggahalli, head of the technology group of Sri Sathya Sai Seva Organisations (SSSO), to devise a sustainable solution to the drinking water problem in rural India that is low on cost, high on impact. They eventually develop a model that satisfies all these criteria and becomes the basis for a project called Premamrutha Dhaara. Funded by Sri Sathya Sai Central Trust, the project aims to install water purification plants in more than 100 villages spanning six states in India, with the ultimate goal of turning over plant operations to the beneficiary villages and setting up a welfare fund in each village from the revenue generated. Social service projects, particularly in developing countries, have their unique challenges. The case highlights the importance of performing feasibility analysis as part of the project planning in social projects. The case also describes how the financial and operational dimensions of sustainability could lead to a self-sustainable system. The social innovation framework used to deploy the water purification project to achieve broader rural welfare has wider implications for project management, social innovation and change, sustainable operations management, strategic non-profit management, and public policy.

The case offers four possibilities for central objectives:

• To perform feasibility analysis in a Project Management course
• To design a social innovation framework in a Social Innovation and Change course
• To understand the dimensions of self-sustainability in a Sustainable Operations Management course
• To measure social impact in Strategic Non-profit Management and Public Policy courses

During the Indian general election of 2019, the Nizamabad constituency in Telangana state found itself in an unprecedented situation with a record 185 candidates competing for one seat. Most of these candidates were local farmers who saw the election as a platform for raising awareness about local issues, particularly the perceived lack of government support for guaranteeing minimum support prices for their crops. More than 185 candidates had in fact contested elections from a single constituency in a handful of elections in the past. The Election Commission of India (ECI) had declared them to be "special elections" where it made exceptions to the original election schedule to accommodate the large number of candidates. However, in the 2019 general election, the ECI made no such exceptions, announcing instead that polling in Nizamabad would be conducted as per the original schedule and results would be declared at the same time as the rest of the country. This presented a unique and unexpected challenge for Rajat Kumar, the Telangana Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) and his team. How were they to conduct free and fair and elections within the mandated timeframe with the largest number of electronic voting machines (EVMs) ever deployed to address the will of 185 candidates in a constituency with 1.55 million voters from rural and semi-urban areas? Case A describes the electoral process followed by the world's largest democracy to guarantee free and fair elections. It concludes by posing several situational questions, the answers to which will determine whether the polls in Nizamabad are conducted successfully or not. Case B, which should be revealed after students have had a chance to deliberate on the challenges posed in Case A, describes the decisions and actions taken by Kumar and his team in preparation for the Nizamabad polls and the events that took place on election day and afterward.

To demonstrate how a quantitative approach to decision making can be used in the public policy domain to achieve end goals. To learn how resource allocation decisions can be made by understanding the scale of the problem, the various resource constraints, and the end goals. To discover operational innovations in the face of regulatory and technical constraints and complete the required steps. To understand the multiple steps involved in conducting elections in the Indian context.

Set in April 2017, this case centers around the digital technology dilemma facing the protagonist Dr. Vimohan, the chief intensivist of Prashant Hospital. The case describes the critical challenges afflicting the intensive care unit (ICU) of the hospital. It then follows Dr. Vimohan as he visits the Bengaluru headquarters of Cloudphysician Healthcare, a Tele-ICU provider. The visit leaves Dr. Vimohan wondering whether he can leverage the Tele-ICU solution to overcome the challenges at Prashant Hospital. He instinctively knew that he would need to use a combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis to resolve this dilemma.

The case study enables critical thinking and decision-making to address the business situation. Assessing the pros and cons of a potential technology solution, examining the readiness of an organization and devising a framework for effective stakeholder and change management are some of the key concepts. Associated tools include cost-benefit analysis, net present value (NPV) analysis, force-field analysis, and change-readiness assessment, in addition to a brief discussion on SWOT analysis.

Set in 2016 in Hyderabad, India, the case follows Puvvala Yugandhar, Senior Vice President at Dr. Reddy's Laboratories (DRL), as he decides what to do about an underperforming production policy at their plants. Adopted a decade earlier, the policy, called Replenish to Consumption -Pooled (RTC-P), had not delivered the expected results. Specifically, the plants had been seeing an increase in production switchovers and creeping buffer levels for certain products, which had led to higher holding costs and lost sales for certain products. A senior consultant had suggested that DRL switch to a demand estimation-based policy called Replenish to Anticipation (RTA), which attempted to address the above concerns by segregating production capacity and updating buffer levels using demand estimates. However, Yugandhar, well aware of the challenges of changing production policies, wanted to explore a variant of RTC-P called Replenish to Consumption -Dedicated (RTC-D), which followed the same buffer update rules as RTC-P but maintained dedicated capacities for a subset of products.

By studying and solving the decision problem in the case, students should be able to better appreciate the challenges involved in making long-term operational changes. It gives them an opportunity to: (1) understand how each input might impact the final decision, and (2) how to weigh each of these inputs in arriving at the final decision.

We crafted the case study "Software Acquisition for Employee Engagement at Pilot Mountain Research " for use in Business Marketing, Buyer Behavior, or Operations Management courses in undergraduate, MBA, or Executive Education programs. The Pilot Mountain Market Research (PMMR) case study provides students with the opportunity to examine how buying decisions can be made utilizing online digital tools that are increasingly available to business-to-business (B2B) purchasing managers. To do so, we created fictitious research studies and data to realistically portray the kinds of information that are publicly available to B2B purchasing managers on the Internet today. In this case study, we introduce students to fit analysis, coding quality technical assessment, sentiment analysis, and ratings & reviews analyses. Students are challenged to integrate findings from these diverse analytical tools, combining both qualitative and quantitative data into concrete employee engagement software (EES) purchasing recommendations.

1. Evolving criteria for selecting a software package for organization-wide procurement in a B2B purchase decision context 2. Appreciate increasing digitalization of businesses 3. Understand importance of employee engagement in organizations and what an organization could do to enhance employee engagement among its workforce 4. Understand decision making processes in the context of digitalisation of businesses

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Case Study In Operations Management

2011, Journal of Business Case Studies (JBCS)

This case study is conducted within the context of the Theory of Constraints. The field research reported in this document contains information specific to the telecommunications industry. An examination of the history, organization design, problems and solutions for one telecommunications company are undertaken from the perspective of academic work in the Theory of Constraints. The information included in this document was developed through interviews with four senior managers including the President, the Chief Technology Officer, a Vice President and a department manager. Their responses were the basis of identifying problems and undesirable effects. The undesirable effects were diagramed in six UDE clouds dealing with the following issues: 1- unclear vision from management to employees; 2- supplier; 3- market; 4- the price and regulation environment; 5- production; and 6- bureaucracy. These undesirable effects were logically examined until a single cloud depicting the core confli...

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In today’s economic climate, many organizations struggle with declining sales and increasing costs. Some choose to hunker down and weather the storm, hoping for better results in the future. However, layoffs and workforce reductions jeopardize future competitiveness. However, organizations that have implemented the Theory of Constraints (TOC) continue to thrive and grow in difficult times, continuing to achieve real bottom line growth, whether by improving productivity or increased revenues. In this paper, the organization dealing with the furniture manufacturing has been studied and the main constraints for the maximum throughput are identified by applying a thinking process tool called as “Theory of Constraints” (TOC). The Drum Buffer Rope (DBR) has been applied for capacity planning and the time for each identified processes is calculated and workload for each work center is calculated. Then the capacity constraint machine is identified. The proper solution has been provided to o...

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ICMR is Asia's most popular repository of management case studies. ICMR Case Collection provides Teachers, Corporate Trainers, and Management Professionals with a variety of teaching and reference material. The collection consists of case studies on a wide range of companies and industries - both Indian and international. ICMR is involved in business research, management consulting, and the development of case studies and courseware in management. ICMR also provides knowledge process outsourcing services to international clients. Over 10 million copies of ICMR case studies have been printed in international and Indian textbooks, workbooks and case study volumes. More than 200,000 individual copies of our case studies have been purchased by many of the leading business schools and universities around the world. Our case studies have won prizes in several global case writing competitions, and also appear in many international management textbooks. More than 5500 case studies, short case studies, and business reports are available for immediate download from this site. The material is available for download as pdf files, with a 'Do Not Copy' watermark.

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The case study is about Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL)'s foreign currency bond issuance and listing on international stock exchanges. The case starts with a brief history of the company, from the founding of RIL by Dhirubhai Ambani in 1966 to being led by Mukesh Ambani in 2022.The case then moves on to the details of RIL's financials, showcasing how the company has grown over the years, and how efficiently it has raised funds from the global capital market and utilized these funds for expansion. Finally, it delves into the details of foreign currency bonds issued by RIL...

Enbridge: A Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) Leader in the Energy Industry

The case describes the various initiatives taken by Enbridge, a Canadian energy company, to create a diverse and inclusive culture where employees would feel good coming to work, collaborate across teams, and be successful and grow their careers. The case first touches upon the main goals of the D&I strategy put in place at Enbridge. It then describes how Enbridge decided to encourage its employee community through various initiatives that included activities, education, and networking...

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Strategic management consists of a set of decisions and actions resulting in the formulation and implementation of strategies designed to achieve the objectives of an organization. It involves taking decisions about the products, location, and the organization's structure-decisions that determine the survival of the organization in the short and long term.....

Business Communication

Communication is an essential aspect of business life. Everyday, business persons have to communicate with people at different levels of the organization or with people external to the organization. And in this globalized environment they also have to communicate with people from different countries, with different cultural backgrounds....

Economics For Managers

Economics is the study of how economic agents or societies choose to use scarce resources to satisfy unlimited wants. It examines how resources can be optimally distributed to satisfy the needs of individuals and society as a whole. Knowledge of economics helps businesses become more profitable through proper allocation of resources....

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Case studies are an important tool to highlight managerial dilemmas. The ICMR case studies are of highest quality and tackle important managerial issues, including social and environmental sustainability. The case studies have repeatedly won international case study contests and have been tested around the globe with much success.

-Dr. Michael Pirson, Assistant Professor of Management, Fordham University; Research Fellow in Psychology; Harvard University; Co-founder and Academic Director, Humanet

I am impressed about the quality of ICMR cases, combining relevant issues, innovative organizationa and excellent case writing handcraft. In recent years, ICMR cases have performed extraordinarily well within the double-blind reviewed annual oikos Global Case Writing Competition.

-Dr. Jost Hamschmidt, Managing Director, oikos Foundation, St. Gallen, Switzerland; Head, oikos Global Case Writing Competition Program

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