Operations strategy

To maintain competitive advantage in a multi-crisis world, operations and strategy must become even more intertwined.

A strong supply base will help U.S.-based manufacturers as well as the economies of Central and South America.

They're simple but overlooked in health care.

Like all good revolutions, just-in-time manufacturing is producing revolutionaries who don’t know when to stop. It is also producing over reactions from people determined to make them stop. Consider the curiously vexed debate about how to get materials to, and work in process through, the shop floor. Pick up virtually any manufacturing magazine these days […]

Not every challenge requires an algorithmic approach.

As China's economy grows and opens further, the opportunity it presents to multinationals is changing. Foreign companies are moving to country development...

The pandemic has cast a spotlight on a historically undervalued asset.

Everything is continuous.

There's a secret about strategy that no one tells you: Every function has one, whether or not it is written down and whether or not it is the product...

The world's biggest shopping day pushes the e-commerce giant to innovate, collaborate, and break down silos.

Three capabilities the consumer health company invested in after demand surged during the pandemic.

The 1990s have been a great time to be in business--unless, that is, you happen to be a manufacturer. As business value has flowed steadily downstream,...

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 […]

Turning the map around on cybersecurity.

Lessons from one Massachusetts company’s attempts to meet soaring demand for PPE.

Employees are constantly in motion—making sales calls or taking service trips; visiting an international office for a few days or relocating there for a few years; soaring across oceans in the corporate jet or heading across town in the company car. Typically, these activities are administered by an assortment of departments and vendors. But we […]

The best solution to the looming shortage of nurses and doctors may be to move chronic disease monitoring and care out of hospitals and into people's...

Don't get left behind.

Few people outside the supply chain function used to care where products came from. Nowadays, everyone from company leaders to interest groups to consumers...

Conventional wisdom says it takes three to five years and tens of millions of dollars to digitize a corporation's supply chain. However, a few companies...