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...

Check processing institutions are being forced to downsize their workforce to cut cost and improve the efficiency of their operations as a result of continued growth of electronic payments, a consequence of the increasing popularity of debit/credit cards and use of online banking. For these...

Energy plays a fundamental role in both manufacturing and services, and natural gas is rapidly becoming a key energy source worldwide. Facilitating this emergence is an expanding network of ocean-going vessels that enable the matching of natural gas supply and demand on a global scale. This is...

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...