Pages
Case Overview
There are approximately 20 cases in this course. Each person should write up three of these during the term. A write-up is a three-page analysis of the case, guided by the discussion questions, any readings for the session, and any ideas discussed previously in the course.
Write-up Guidelines
Assume you are writing to someone (e.g., a senior person with responsibility in the organization) who knows the facts; keep it succinct; many senior executives don’t want to read long reports. The write-up is not to exceed three single-spaced pages of typed text (not smaller than 12 pt. font, please), with up to three supporting exhibits.
A good paper should clearly and succinctly state recommendations in the first paragraph. The remaining paragraphs should present the rationale for the recommendations, including expected consequences (both desirable and undesirable). Each case has a set of questions (found below), which are a guide to help you with the analysis – however, you should not limit your analysis to narrowly answering these questions. A good report is not a chronology of analysis, but a clearly articulated statement of recommendation and support. If there are options under consideration in the case that you reject, a clear rationale for your decision should be provided. Facts stated in the case need not be restated unless used to make a point. Do not summarize the case in your paper.
Grading
Write-ups will be graded with the following items considered:
- Broad discussion of relevant strategic, operational and environmental issues.
- Analysis
- Qualitative analysis of all factors relevant to the problem.
- Quantitative analysis (if appropriate) and explanation of approach.
- Explicit recommendations, reasoning, and implications of such, including discussion of implementation and expected consequences of the recommendations.
- Clarity, logic, creativity, exposition.
Discussion Questions
SES # | TOPICS | QUESTIONS |
---|---|---|
1 | Introduction to service operations |
Case: Benihana
|
2 | Process design: Order fulfillment |
Case: CVS
|
3 | The role of the employee in service operations |
Case: Ritz-Carlton
|
4 | The role of the customer |
Case: Zipcar
|
5 | Refining retail business models |
Case: McDonald’s
Case: Starbucks
|
6 | Clockspeed and disruptions |
|
7 | Disruptive service models |
Case: Southwest Airlines
|
8 | Process design: Health care systems |
Case: Shouldice Hospital
|
9 | Service operations frameworks I | |
10 | Service operations frameworks II | |
11 | Retailing and logistics capabilities I |
Case: Seven-Eleven Japan
|
12 | Retailing and logistics capabilities II |
Case: Wal-mart
|
13 | Employee involvement and data mining |
Case: IBM at Dillard’s For the following three questions, please feel free to use the following data: Exhibit 5 & Traffic data (XLS)
|
14 | The last ten yards of supply chain delivery |
Case: Mercadona
|
15 | Consumer insurance |
Case: Progressive
|
16 | Internet as disruptive vs. sustaining |
Case: Citibank
Case: Charles Schwab
|
17 | Business-to-Business (B2B) supply chain platforms |
Case: Alibaba
|
18 | Information technology outsourcing and consulting | |
19 | Web services, cloud computing and digital media |
Case: Amazon
|
20 | Disruptions and servicization in the auto industry |
|
21 | Homebuilding: A complex network of services |
|
22 | Supply chain systems: Social responsibility |
Case: IKEA (A)
Case: IKEA (B)
|
23 | Organizational change; Government services |
Case: IRS
|
This course is heavily based on discussion of the case assignments. However, slides are available for select sessions below.
SES # | TOPICS | LECTURE NOTES |
---|---|---|
1 | Introduction to service operations | (PDF) |
2 | Process design: Order fulfillment | (PDF) |
6 | Clockspeed and disruptions | (PDF - 2.0MB) |
9-10 | Service operations frameworks II & III | (PDF - 1.0MB) (Courtesy of Gabriel R. Bitran. Used with permission.) |
19 | Web services, cloud computing and digital media | (PDF) |
22 | Supply chain systems: Social responsibility | (PDF) |
The course project is an opportunity to apply course concepts and to perform an in-depth analysis of operations strategy issues that are of interest to you. The final project can be done individually or in groups of up to three people. The project is to write a paper and make a presentation on an operations “comparison study.” Identify a pair of organizations in the same (or similar) industry and compare their operations strategies, systems design and operations, and/or performance. Assess the strengths and weaknesses of each company and give your opinions on the appropriateness of the operations approach of each. Give your opinions on the relative competitive strengths of each company going forward in time and the role that operations plays in each company’s competitive strengths and weaknesses. You may use public or private companies, large or small, foreign or domestic.
The paper should be 15-20 pages in length (double-spaced, 12 point font with one-inch margins on each side). Examples of company pairs might be: McDonald’s/Burger King, JetBlue/Delta, Starbucks/Au Bon Pain, Fedex/UPS, Fidelity/Vanguard, Mass General Hospital/Beth Israel, etc. The paper is due on Ses #24. Student teams will give short presentations on their papers during Ses #23 and 24.
Student Project Examples
All student project examples are courtesy of MIT students and are used with permission.
Vapiano vs. Trattoria Il Panino (PDF) (Courtesy of Dori Davari, Terence Lam, Iulian Pogor, and Joao Violante. Used with permission.)
Trader Joe’s vs. Whole Foods (PDF)
Cleveland Clinic vs. CVS MinuteClinic (PDF - 1.5MB)
Discussion questions for all assigned readings and cases can be found in the Assignments section of this course. Students must read all the assigned case studies, but are required to complete write-ups for only three of their choosing. A list of optional reading materials can be found in the Syllabus.
SES # | TOPICS | READINGS |
---|---|---|
1 | Introduction to service operations |
Frei, Frances. “Breaking the Trade-off Between Efficiency and Service.” Harvard Business Review 84, no. 11 (2006): 92-101. Case Sasser Jr, W. Earl, and John R. Klug. “Benihana of Tokyo.” Harvard Business School Case. Harvard Business School Publishing. Case: 9-673-057, Rev. July 10, 2004. |
2 | Process design: Order fulfillment |
Pink, Daniel H. “Who Has the Next Big Idea?” Fast Company Magazine, August 31, 2001. Hammer, Michael. “The Process Enterprise: An Executive Perspective.” Hammer and Company, June 2001. Case McAfee, Andrew. “Pharmacy Service Improvement at CVS (A).” Harvard Business School Case. Harvard Business School Publishing. Case: 9-606-015, Rev. October 20, 2006. |
3 | The role of the employee in service operations |
Hemp, Paul. “My Week as a Room-Service Waiter at the Ritz.” Harvard Business Review 80, no. 6 (2002). Case Sucher, Sandra J., and Stacy McManus. “The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company.” Harvard Business School Case. Harvard Business School Publishing. Case: 9-601-163, Rev. July 11, 2002. |
4 | The role of the customer |
Frei, Frances X. “The Four Things a Service Business Must Get Right.” Harvard Business Review 86, no. 4 (2008): 70-80. Case Frei, Frances X. “Zipcar: Influencing Customer Behavior.” Harvard Business School Case. Harvard Business School Publishing. Case: 9-605-054, Rev. June 30, 2005. |
5 | Refining retail business models |
Cases Upton, David M. “McDonald’s Corporation (Abridged).” Harvard Business School Case. Harvard Business School Publishing. Case: 9-603-041, Rev. June 16, 2005. Moon, Youngme, and John A. Quelch. “Starbucks: Delivering Customer Service.” Harvard Business School Case. Harvard Business School Publishing. Case: 9-504-016, Rev. Februrary 3, 2004. |
6 | Clockspeed and disruptions | Fine, Charles H. Clockspeed: Winning Industry Control in the Age of Temporary Advantage. Basic Books, 1999. ISBN: 9780738201535. |
7 | Disruptive service models |
Case Heskett, James L., and Early Sasser Jr. “Southwest Airlines: In a Different World.” Harvard Business School Case. Harvard Business School Publishing. Case: 9-910-419, Rev. June 15, 2010. |
8 | Process design: Health care systems |
Spear, Steven J. “Fixing Health Care from the Inside, Today.” Harvard Business Review 83, no. 9 (2005). Case Hallowell, Roger, and James L. Heskett. “Shouldice Hospital Limited (Abridged).” Harvard Business School Case. Harvard Business School Publishing. Case: 9-805-002, Rev. January 21, 2005. |
9 | Service operations frameworks I | Bitran, Gabriel R., and Maureen Lojo. “A Framework for Analyzing Service Operations.” European Management Journal 11, no. 3 (1993): 271-282. |
10 | Service operations frameworks II | |
11 | Retailing and logistics capabilities I |
Lee, Hau. “The Triple-A Supply Chain.” Harvard Business Review 82, no. 10 (2004): 102-112. Case Chopra, Sunil. “Seven-Eleven Japan Co.” Kellogg School of Management Case. Case: KEL-026, Rev. February 14, 2005. |
12 | Retailing and logistics capabilities II |
Cases Bradley, Stephen P., Pankaj Ghemawat, and Sharon Foley. “Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.” Harvard Business School Case. Harvard Business School Publishing. Case: 9-794-024, Rev. November 6, 2002. Rosegrant, Susan. “Wal-mart’s Response to Hurricane Katrina: Striving for a Public-Private Partnership.” Harvard Kennedy School Case. Harvard Kennedy School Case Program. Case: C16-07-1876.0, August 28, 2007. |
13 | Employee involvement and data mining |
Case Ton, Zeynep. “IBM Retail Business Assessment at Dillard’s, Inc.: Managing Staffing Levels to Improve Conversion.” Harvard Business School Case. Harvard Business School Publishing. Case: 9-610-051, February 26, 2010. |
14 | The last ten yards of supply chain delivery |
Case Ton, Zeynep, and Simon Harrow. “Mercadona.” Harvard Business School Case. Harvard Business School Publishing. Case: 9-610-089, Rev. April 14, 2010. |
15 | Consumer insurance |
Loveman, Gary. “Diamonds in the Data Mine.” Harvard Business Review 81, no. 5 (2003): 109-113. Case Frei, Francis X. “Innovation at Progressive (A): Pay-As-You-Go Insurance.” Harvard Business School Case. Harvard Business School Publishing. Case: 9-602-175, Rev. April 29, 2004. |
16 | Internet as disruptive vs. sustaining |
Cases Farhoomand, Ali, and Minyi Huang. “Citibank’s e-Business Strategy for Global Corporate Banking.” Harvard Business School Case. Harvard Business School Publishing. Case: HKU797, October 24, 2008. Burgelman, Robert A., and Philip Meza. “The Charles Schwab Corporation in 2007: Fixing and Redefining the Core Business.” Stanford Graduate School of Business Case. Case: SM-35C, January 03, 2008. |
17 | Business-to-Business (B2B) supply chain platforms |
Magretta, Joan. “Fast, Global, & Entrepreneurial: Supply Chain Management, Hong Kong Style.” Harvard Business Review 76, no. 5 (1998): 102-114. Eisenmann, Thomas, Geoffrey Parker, and Marshall W. Van Alstyne. “Strategies for Two-sided Markets.” Harvard Business Review 82 (2006). Case Wulf, Julie M. “Alibaba Group.” Harvard Business School Case. Harvard Business School Publishing. Case: 9-710-436, Rev. April 26, 2010. |
18 | Information technology outsourcing and consulting |
Case Burgelman, Robert A., and Aneesha Capur. “Infosys Consulting in 2006: Leading the Next Generation of Business and Information Technology Consulting.” Stanford Graduate School of Business Case. Case: SM-151, May 16, 2006. |
19 | Web services, cloud computing and digital media |
Overby, Stephanie. “The End of IT Outsourcing As We Know It.” CIO, August 11, 2010. Case Huckman, Robert S., Gary P. Pisano, and Liz Kind. “Amazon Web Services.” Harvard Business School Case. Harvard Business School Publishing. Case: 9-609-048, October 20, 2008. |
20 | Disruptions and servicization in the auto industry |
Womack, James P., Daniel T. Jones, and Daniel Roos. Chapters 1-3 in The Machine that Changed the World: The Story of Lean Production. Harper Collins, 1991. ISBN: 9780060974176. Watch: CBS. “Making the World a ‘Better Place’.” March 19, 2009. YouTube. Accessed February 10, 2011. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXfqGL3C2uI&NR=1&feature=fvwp. TEDtalksDirector. “Shai Agassi: A Bold Plan for Mass Adoption of Electric Cars.” April 13, 2009. YouTube. Accessed February 10, 2011. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcoJt2KLC9k&feature=related |
21 | Homebuilding: A complex network of services | |
22 | Supply chain systems: Social responsibility |
Cases Bartlett, Christopher A., Vincent Dessain, and Anders Sjoman. “IKEA’s Global Sourcing Challenge: Indian Rugs and Child Labor (A).” Harvard Business School Case. Harvard Business School Publishing. Case: 9-906-414, May 3, 2006. ———. “IKEA’s Global Sourcing Challenge: Indian Rugs and Child Labor (B).” Harvard Business School Case. Harvard Business School Publishing. Case: 9-906-415, May 3, 2006. |
23 | Organizational change; Government services |
Case Edmondson, Amy C. and Frances X. Frei. “Transformation at the IRS.” Harvard Business School Case. Harvard Business School Publishing. Case: 9-603-010, Rev. November 12, 2002. |
24 | Student project presentations and wrap-up |
Course Meeting Times
Lectures: 2 sessions / week, 1.5 hours / session
Overview
The course takes an operations point of view to look at companies and industries in the service sector. The course will be primarily case based and will include cases from industries and sectors such as fast food, retailing, government, health care, financial services, internet services, humanitarian services, entertainment, hospitality. Cases will be supplemented with lectures and readings, with some guest lectures as well.
Prerequisites
The recommended prerequisite for this course is 15.760/15.761 Introduction to Operations Management. However, students who have not taken 15.760 should be able to get up to speed with not much difficulty.
Intended Audience
This class is for anyone interested in operations and/or the service sector, with a focus on second-year MBA students, particularly those aspiring to careers in (1) operations, (2) service sector, (3) entrepreneurship, (4) strategy, or (5) management consulting. A working knowledge of operations, which, for many firms, employs the greatest number of employees and requires the largest investment in assets, is often indispensable for general managers and entrepreneurs.
Grading
ACTIVITIES | PERCENTAGES |
---|---|
Class participation | 35% |
Final project | 25% |
Case submissions | 40% |
Class Participation
You will be graded on your contributions to create and enhance a positive learning environment for this course. This includes enhancing the atmosphere and quality of classroom discussions, as well as interactions outside the classroom. Grading will be based on the quality and impact of your contributions, not primarily on quantity (although a minimum amount of the latter is necessary to deliver on the former).
In a typical class session, one or more students will be asked to begin the discussion by addressing specific questions, found in the Assignments section of this course. If you have thoroughly prepared the case or reading, you should have no difficulty in handling such a leadoff request. After the leadoff initial analysis and recommendations, the discussion will be opened to the rest of the class, sometimes with cold calling mixed in. Some of the criteria for judging effective class participation include
- Relevance,
- Insightfulness (in analysis, observation, or questions),
- Constructiveness in the context of the class discussion flow,
- Depth of analysis,
- Clarity and brevity.
Please plan to attend class on a regular basis and come to class prepared to participate fully.
Final Project
The final project for this course is an opportunity to apply course concepts and to perform an in-depth analysis of operations strategy issues that are of interest to you. You may do this in a team (up to three people). More information can be found in the Projects section of this course.
You should make very clear what part of your write-up is based on your own thinking and what part summarizes pre-existing outside sources. Please cite all significant external sources used for your report. This applies in particular to papers you may have written for other classes, to documents you may have received from the company you are analyzing, interviews with industry experts, etc. Building on external sources is by no means a “bad thing”–solid work is typically aware of and builds on what others have done. Ideally though, you should take this external information and add the filter of your own critical thinking and the concepts studied in this class to synthesize it, critique it, etc.
Case Write-ups
There are approximately 20 cases in this course. Each person should write up three of these during the term. The first case write-up is worth 10% of the course grade, and the two subsequent cases are worth 15% each. A write-up is three-page analysis of the case, guided by the Assignment Questions, any Readings for the session, and any ideas discussed previously in the course.
Electronic versions of the write-ups are due by noon of the day of class. Write-ups should be done individually. Please do not discuss with others (in or out of the class) the cases you choose to write up. Also, please do not seek outside (i.e., Internet) sources related to the details or analysis of the case.
Course Workload
My expectation is that you will spend approximately nine hours per week in total for this course. Your weekly schedule should plan for roughly
- three hours in class,
- three hours doing individual reading and case preparation before group meetings,
- three hours for group discussions to prepare the weekly case assignments and/or the ongoing final project.
Course Textbooks
The required text for this course is:
Fine, Charles H. Clockspeed: Winning Industry Control in the Age of Temporary Advantage. Reading, MA: Basic Books, 1999. ISBN: 9780738201535.
There are some textbooks that discuss operations strategy that may be of interest:
Slack, Nigel, and Michael Lewis. Operations Strategy. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002. ISBN: 9780130313867.
Hill, Terry. Manufacturing Strategy: Text and Cases. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1999. ISBN: 9780256230727.
Miltenburg, John. Manufacturing Strategy: How to Formulate and Implement a Winning Plan. New York, NY: Productivity Press, 2005. ISBN: 9781563273179.
Hayes, Robert H., Steven C. Wheelwright, and Kim B. Clark. Dynamic Manufacturing: Creating the Learning Organization. New York, NY: Free Press, 1988. ISBN: 9780029142110.
Garvin, David A. Operations Strategy: Text and Cases. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1991. ISBN: 9780136389170.
Other business books that may be of interest to students taking this course:
Hammer, Michael. The Agenda: What Every Business Must Do to Dominate the Decade. New York, NY: Crown Publishing Group, 2001. ISBN: 9780609609668.
Hammer, Michael, and Steven Stanton. The Reengineering Revolution. New York, NY: Harper Collins, 1995. ISBN: 9780887307362.
Pine II, B. Joseph. Mass Customization: The New Frontier in Business Competition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1993. ISBN: 9780875843728.
Womack, James P., Daniel T. Jones, and Daniel Roos. The Machine that Changed the World: The Story of Lean Production. New York, NY: Harper Collins, 1991. ISBN: 9780060974176.
Klein, Janice A. Revitalizing Manufacturing: Text and Cases. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 1990. ISBN: 9780256068092.
Dertouzos, Michael L., Richard K. Lester, and Robert M. Solow. Made In America: Regaining the Productive Edge. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989. ISBN: 9780262041003.
Cohen, Stephen S., and John Zysman. Manufacturing Matters: The Myth of the Post-Industrial Economy. New York, NY: Basic Books, 1988. ISBN: 9780465043859.
Laseter, Timothy M. Balanced Sourcing: Cooperation and Competition in Supplier Relationships. New York, NY: Jossey-Bass, 1998. ISBN: 9780787944438.