The apparel industry (which includes clothing, footwear, accessories, etc.) is one of the world’s largest, due partly to the relatively low barriers to entry. According to Euromonitor International, there were more than 1,400 retail brands at the start of 2013. All of these brands are concerned about meeting growing demands and getting their collections out […]
Read More… from Fast Fashion Retailing – Transforming Operations Management
Does bad weather reduce productivity within factories and other workplaces? This is the question that the latest research from Marcelo Olivares of the Columbia Business School and Gérard Cachon and Santiago Gallino of Wharton addresses. The researchers used inventories and productivity statistics covering 10 years for 64 US automobile assembly plants, and matched them to […]
Read More… from Severe Weather: Moderating Its Impact on Productivity
In this White Paper, the author looks at how organizations can free up necessary resources to pursue their overall business strategies. Identifying the ‘waste’ and ‘complexity’ in a company can free up people and space needed to do so, calling this process becoming ‘Lean.’ As we Lean the business, says the author, enthusiasm is generated, […]
A report published in 2012, Value Creation in Listed European Family Firms, showed that listed European family businesses have created more value over the last decade than non-family concerns, achieving far higher prices on the stock exchange. Using a sample of 2,423 European listed companies monitored during the period 2001-2010, it took a much broader […]
Read More… from The Ties That Bind: How Family Businesses Create Value
Sooner or later, any engineer working on new technology or infrastructure will hear a familiar question from investors: Does it scale up? There are few axioms in business as simple and historically accepted as the idea that ‘big is better.’ Large-scale industrial agriculture is better — more efficient, more effective, cheaper — than the family […]
Read More… from Why Scaling Up Is No Longer the Only Strategy
