Category Archives: Production Operations

Carbon fiber for cars? Green and clean?

Carbon fiber is hard to handle. See why from an operations perspective. Not for ships soon! But maybe before cars!

Cars to follow Bikes: BMW to increase volume of carbon fiber cars « The Operations Room

 

Who, us? Control freaks in operations?

How does Apple succeed? Being control freaks about operations. Should we be? Control freaks both succeed and don’t, depending on whether they control the right things well.

I can remember the day when IBM were control freaks about anything to do with their computers. This is in part the old tension between preserving proprietary content and opening up to get more customers (and possibly cheaper ones who have a lower Total Cost of Ownership reservation price).

Charles Fine’s interesting research on the endless cycle between vertical integration and modularity is relevant here, and his notion of cycle time.

The genius behind the Apple Store « The Operations Room

 

What changes the number of jobs offshored?

As China’s Workers Get a Raise, Companies Fret: Anticipated impact on Offshoring « The Operations Room

This is a very interesting analysis of why jobs in manufacturing might move back here, or at least out of China.

Those of you who are into the nuts and bolts modeling will want to read the following Management Science article.

http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/vanmieghem/htm/pubs/2010_Allon_Van%20Mieghem_Global%20Dual%20Sourcing_Mgt%20Science.pdf