Publications

27 Feb 2023
Research & Ideas

How One Late Employee Can Hurt Your Business: Data from 25 Million Timecards

deviations on the performance of individual stores in a new study. “One employee being late or absent can negatively affect not only store operations, but also their coworkers by making them stay to make up for the lost labor.” Ananth Raman, UPS Foundation Professor of... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand; Retail

19 Oct 2021
Research & Ideas

Fed Up Workers and Supply Woes: What's Next for Dollar Stores?

merchandise into their distribution centers. All retailers are suffering from a shortage of truckers, a shortage of trailers, shortage of capacity in all the logistics networks to move goods around. At the same time, we’re seeing... View Details

Keywords: by Christine Pazzanese, Harvard Gazette; Retail

Research Summary

Health-care Applications

Active postmarketing drug surveillance. There is substantial interest within the U.S. health community and among health policymakers in developing a surveillance system that scans public health databases in order to proactively detect potential drug safety... View Details

May 1994 (Revised March 2008)
Case

Barilla SpA (A)

By: Janice H. Hammond

Barilla SpA, an Italian manufacturer that sells to its retailers largely through third-party distributors, experienced widely fluctuating demand patterns from its distributors during the late 1980s. This case describes a proposal to address the problem by implementing... View Details

Keywords: Order Taking and Fulfillment; Logistics; Supply Chain; Technology; Food and Beverage Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Italy

14 Mar 2018
Research & Ideas

Feeling Stressed? Try Sniffing Your Romantic Partner's Shirt

will look at whether a partner’s scent soothes other types of people, too. “The decision to use women as smellers was not based on predicted sex difference, but rather on logistical considerations (e.g., prior research showing that women... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

16 Apr 2001
Research & Ideas

Strategy and the Internet

offering a different set of features, a different array of services, or different logistical arrangements. The Internet affects operational effectiveness and strategic positioning in very different ways. It makes it harder for companies... View Details

Keywords: by Michael E. Porter

August 2017 (Revised September 2022)
Case

Fuyao Glass America: Sourcing Decision

By: Willy Shih

In today's global economy, what are the factors that go into production location choice? This case is set in the world's second largest automotive glass producer as it expands from China into the United States. To meet a very aggressive cost target, management is faced... View Details

Keywords: Supply Chains; Globalization Of Supply Chain; Manufacturing Footprint; Manufacturing; Manufacturing Strategy; Global Strategy; Supply Chain; Globalization; Supply Chain Management; Production; Logistics; Strategy; Auto Industry; Manufacturing Industry; United States; China

12 Jul 2022
Cold Call Podcast

Can the Foodservice Distribution Industry Recover from the Pandemic?

Keywords: Re: David E. Bell; Service; Food & Beverage

October 2017 (Revised October 2022)
Case

Jumia Nigeria: from Retail to Marketplace (A)

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Namrata Arora

Founded in 2012, Jumia Nigeria, a startup effort by Germany-based Rocket Internet, aimed to become an African Amazon. The company entered the nascent market and immediately enjoyed an uptick in consumer spending fueled by the strength of Nigeria’s oil-based economy. By... View Details

Keywords: Retail; Marketplace; Inventory; Ecommerce; Funding; Business Ecosystem; Business Ecosystems; Competition; Business Model; Globalization; Emerging Markets; Expansion; Logistics; Competitive Strategy; E-commerce; Retail Industry; India; Nigeria; Africa

July 2005 (Revised February 2011)
Case

Tanpin Kanri: Retail Practice at Seven-Eleven Japan

By: Rajiv Lal and Arar Han

Toshifumi Suzuki, chairman and CEO of Seven and I Holding Co., was widely credited as the mastermind behind Seven-Eleven Japan's spectacular rise. Although Seven-Eleven Japan began as a small licensee of U.S. convenience store chain 7-Eleven, Inc. (then Southland... View Details

Keywords: Framework; Growth and Development Strategy; Management Practices and Processes; Demand and Consumers; Distribution; Logistics; Technology; Retail Industry; Japan

26 Nov 2001
Research & Ideas

How Toyota Turns Workers Into Problem Solvers

When HBS professor Steven Spear recently released an abstract on problem solving at Toyota, HBS Working Knowledge staffer Sarah Jane Johnston e-mailed off some questions. Spear not only answered the questions, but also asked some of his own—and answered those as... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Johnston; Manufacturing; Transportation; Auto

April 2019 (Revised August 2020)
Case

Raksul

By: Scott Duke Kominers, Masahiro Kotosaka, Nobuo Sato and Akiko Kanno

Raksul, 2018 Forbes Japan "Startup of the Year," ran an e-commerce platform drawing upon thousands of individual suppliers. Launched as a business-to-business printing services marketplace, Raksul had recently expanded to operate both a logistics/delivery marketplace... View Details

Keywords: Marketplace Design; B2B; Platform Strategy; Printing; Entrepreneurship; Digital Platforms; Logistics; Advertising; Growth and Development Strategy; Industry Structures; E-commerce; Web Services Industry; Japan

27 Apr 2020
Research & Ideas

How Remote Work Changes What We Think About Onboarding

third to last, with a score of 3.4 on a 1-5 scale. In other words, companies struggle to onboard employees even when times are good and relatively predictable. Outlined below are practices for managing remote onboarding, broken into two broad categories: addressing... View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg

04 Oct 2022
What Do You Think?

Have Managers Underestimated the Need for Face-to-Face Contact?

remotely We can get the job done, but it’s tough to flourish.” Similarly, there is growing evidence that changes in some consumer behaviors occasioned by the pandemic are not all that permanent. While Amazon encouraged us to trade off View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

30 Mar 2003
Research & Ideas

The Future of IT Consulting

communicating with warehouse computers, which in turn directly communicate with manufacturer computers, and, again in the chain, manufacturers' computers directly communicate with their supplier computers. In addition, computer-to-computer communications can track... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Johnston; Consulting

May 1988 (Revised June 2023)
Case

National Cranberry Cooperative, 1996

By: Roy D. Shapiro

Describes the continuous flow process used to process cranberries into juice and/or sauce. Requires student to analyze process flows to determine where the bottlenecks are and to decide how, and whether, to expand capacity. Original version written by J.G. Miller and... View Details

Keywords: Logistics; Performance Capacity; Performance Improvement; Supply Chain; Mathematical Methods; Cost vs Benefits; Production