Vehicle supply has traditionally been based on forecast-driven production, and a large fraction of cars has been sold from stock—a practice which incurs considerable cost in terms of stock holding and sales incentives. Derived from successes in other industries, the benefits of responsive...

Process improvement methods –such as Lean, Six Sigma and Agile– have been widely studied, and we know what tools work, and where. Yet our longitudinal study of 204 improvement projects shows that one year into a successful implementation about half of all projects backslide. After two years,...