Our goal is to assess the strategic and operational benefits of electronic integration for industrial procurement. We conduct a field study with an industrial supplier and examine the drivers of performance of the procurement process. Our research quantifies both the operational and strategic...

Strategic product line breadth decisions evoke differential responses from the manufacturing and the marketing areas: manufacturing prefers keeping process disruptions to a minimum and, as a result, discourages product proliferation; however, marketing, in its attempt to match products to...

In this field study, conducted at a leading avionics guidance systems manufacturer, we gathered primary data on time and cost performance of both the design and manufacturing phases of new product development (NPD). We modeled the impact of the management levers relating to oversight, the...

Product design decisions substantially affect the cost and revenue drivers. A design configuration with commonality can lower manufacturing cost. However, such a design may hinder the ability to extract price premiums through product differentiation. We explicitly investigate the...

Technology transfer to low-cost locations offers global firms an opportunity to reduce their variable costs involved in serving emerging markets. However, such moves may also make imitation by local competitors easier. As a consequence, technology transfer may create competition in the local...

We examine the relationship between life-cycle productivity and conformance quality in software products. The effects of product size, personnel capability, software process, usage of tools, and higher front-end investments on productivity and conformance quality were analyzed to derive...

We study the key determinants of customer satisfaction with software products. Our analysis, based upon a large sample of over 2,500 customer responses, suggests that capability and usability are the critical drivers of overall customer satisfaction. We also find that the importance of seven key...

In fast-cycle, high technology industries, the speed and rate at which companies can introduce products into the market are critical for sustaining competitive advantage and market share. The authors analyze new product development by three international manufacturers that dominate a segment of...

Call center managers are facing increasing pressure to reduce costs while maintaining acceptable service quality. Consequently, they often face constrained stochastic optimization problems, minimizing cost subject to service-level constraints. Complicating this problem is the fact that...

In the health-care domain, diagnostic service centers provide advice to patients over the phone about what the most appropriate course of action is based on their symptoms. Managers of such centers must strike a balance between accuracy of advice, callers' waiting time, and staffing costs by...