Building Competitive Advantage Through Operations

Introduction

Reengineering, ERP, TQM, JIT, lean manufacturing, world-class: operations executives have been confronted with a barrage of fads and strategies over the last decade, all promising to increase the rate of performance improvement. Many of these panaceas failed to deliver the performance improvement promised or expected, but that has not lessened the need for operations effectiveness.

More and more, the world's best companies rely on a common understanding of the firm's operations strategy throughout the organization. Building Competitive Advantage Through Operations cuts through the rhetoric and provides practical tools and concepts for building sound operating strategies that work. Participants explore the frameworks and techniques for performance improvement and analyze successful operations. At the end of the program, they take away new ideas and strategies to reinvigorate their organizations and to maximize competitive advantage.

Program Objectives

Building Competitive Advantage Through Operations was designed at Harvard Business School (HBS) to prepare managers to enhance performance through operational excellence. This Executive Education program addresses key issues through in-depth analyses and interactive discussions, exposing participants to leading examples of operations and manufacturing excellence in product and service firms worldwide. Participants take away the concepts and tools to:

• Create an operations strategy that fits a dynamic, competitive environment;
• Cultivate flexibility for quick-response operations;
• Build and install IT systems that deliver value and change as the business evolves;
• Build and manage teams in an operating environment;
• Manage the new supply chain to improve customer satisfaction;
• Create operating capabilities for lasting competitive advantage; and
• Develop an internally consistent management and human resource system that sustains learning and improvement.

With more than 60 years' experience in Executive Education, Harvard Business School is the leading provider of advanced learning opportunities that strengthen the leadership capacity of both individuals and their organizations. Unlike any other, the HBS Executive Education learning model immerses the world's most promising managers in a transformational experience that transcends the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and tools—and fosters professional, intellectual, and personal development. Every program challenges executives to grow as leaders, to shape powerful ideas into competitive solutions, and to think and manage differently in a changing business world.

Curriculum

An operations strategy is not a carefully assembled folder sitting on an executive's shelf. Rather, it is living and breathing knowledge that becomes an integral part of the firm and provides guideposts for decision making and direction setting. Clearly, product and service firms that have achieved operations and manufacturing excellence understand this reality. It also is the basis for this program's intensive curriculum.

STUDYING SUCCESSFUL OPERATIONS Through in-depth analyses of real-world case studies, participants gain a firsthand view of the successful operations of many companies, including:

• Alcoa Inc.;
• eBay Inc.;
• Progressive Casualty Insurance Company;
• Southwest Airlines Co.; and
• Toyota Motor Corporation.

TRAINING MANAGERS AS TEACHERS This special session is dedicated to training participants as teachers. It equips executives with the skills needed to share their knowledge and make the learning actionable organization-wide. Focusing on several topics, they:

• Explore the methods and techniques for implementing and spreading these powerful new operations and improvement strategies to employees at all levels;
• Begin to develop an educational strategy appropriate for their companies; and
• Gain the knowledge and tools to launch a program for revitalizing operations development and creating a learning environment throughout their organizations.

Participant Mix

Building Competitive Advantage Through Operations is intended for executives and teams charged with building and leading operations strategies in manufacturing and service organizations, as well as for those with more direct operations responsibilities. They represent diverse companies and are drawn from general management, operations, product development, and manufacturing.

Participants typically include, but are not limited to:

• Vice presidents of operations in service or manufacturing companies;
• IT directors/CIOs interested in applying new operations methods to information technology;
• Directors of manufacturing, new product development, and engineering; and
• Professionals directly responsible for operations improvement.

PARTICIPATING COMPANIES HAVE INCLUDED:

3Com Corporation Alcoa Inc. American Express Company Avon Products, Inc. BAE Systems plc BASF AG Biogen Idec Inc. The Boeing Company Bose Corporation Bristol-Myers Squibb Company Chemetall Gmbh Cingular Wireless LLC Cooper Tire & Rubber Company

Herman Miller, Inc. Ingersoll-Rand Company Limited Johnson & Johnson Lucent Technologies Inc. Merck & Co., Inc. Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc. Microsoft Corporation Sprint Nextel Corporation Steelcase Inc. Sunbeam Products, Inc. Telefónica S.A. Verizon Communications Inc. Xerox Corporation

Faculty

TEACHING TEAM This Executive Education program is developed and taught by Harvard Business School faculty who are distinguished academicians, skilled educators, groundbreaking researchers, award-winning authors, and entrepreneurs in their respective fields. Representing various disciplines, they remain close to practice through relationships with business and industry leaders and through personal involvement as board members and consultants for top companies around the world. HBS faculty leverage their business expertise and field-based research to create new knowledge and enduring concepts that shape the practice of management. Short biographical sketches follow; more detailed biographies are accessible at www.hbs.edu/research/faculty.html.

H. KENT BOWEN, Bruce Rauner Professor of Business Administration, teaches in the Technology and Operations Management Unit. He has served as the head of the "Technology and Operations Management" course in the MBA required curriculum, as well as for two advanced-level courses, "Running and Growing the Small Company" and "The Operating Manager," and for the seminar, "Science-Based Business." His current research specifically focuses on managing technology-based enterprises: the management of science-based organizations; a framework for the operations manager as leader, learner, and teacher; and the principles for rapid learning in operations and technology management. Drawing from his work, Bowen coauthored "Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System" (with S. Spear), which was published in the Harvard Business Review. His book, The Perpetual Enterprise Machine: Seven Keys to Corporate Renewal Through Successful Product and Process Development, was the result of another collaboration (with K. Clark, C. Holloway, and S. Wheelwright). Bowen joined the HBS faculty after 22 years at MIT, where he was the Ford Professor of Engineering and a cofounder of "Leaders for Manufacturing," a joint research and education program developed by the MIT School of Engineering and the MIT Sloan School of Management. He serves as a director or as an adviser for several companies.

ROBERT S. HUCKMAN, Associate Professor of Business Administration, is a member of the Technology and Operations Management Unit and currently teaches the second-year MBA course in "Operations Strategy." He serves as a faculty research fellow in the healthcare program of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and is a member of the HBS Healthcare Initiative. His research focuses on the linkages among organizational characteristics, technological choice, and operating performance, with an emphasis on the healthcare industry. He has published articles in the American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, Health Affairs, the Journal of Health Economics, and Management Science. His recent article entitled, "Adopting New Technologies: Turf Battles in Coronary Revascularization" (with G. Pisano), appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine. Huckman was a principal and founding equity member of Stamos Associates, Inc., a strategy and operations consulting firm serving clients in the healthcare industry (acquired in 1997 by Perot Systems Corporation), and also has worked at Booz Allen Hamilton, Inc.

DAVID M. UPTON, Albert J. Weatherhead III Professor of Business Administration, is a member of the Technology and Operations Management Unit, and serves as the head of the required first-year MBA course, "Technology and Operations Management." He is the faculty chair of this program, and teaches in the "Delivering Information Services" program for Executive Education. A recipient of the School's Apgar Award for Innovation in Teaching, his current research project involves operations from around the world, and focuses on the application of information technology in operations. Upton is the author or a coauthor of five books, including two recent titles: Operations, Strategy, and Technology: Pursuing the Competitive Edge and Strategic Operations: Competing through Capabilities (both with R. Hayes, G. Pisano, and S. Wheelwright). Among his published articles is "A Path-Based Approach to Information Technology in Manufacturing" (with A. McAfee) in the International Journal of Technology Management. He serves on the board of Tech Data Corporation, and has consulted for Deloitte & Touche Solutions, IBM Corporation, Unilever, and other companies.