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Managing Complexity - Health Advisor
The healthcare delivery system is certainly complex and seems destined to consume the whole GDP. What should we do to avoid this destiny? Working with IBM, Tennenbaum Institute researchers have the answer – let 10,000 12-year olds work it out. Rahul Basole, Doug Bodner, and Kristi Kirkland are developing an online game – Health Advisor – where you can manage the healthcare system, providing clients with advice on alternative providers and their performance, as well as managing the process of getting through the healthcare system at a reasonable cost. We fully expect that 2-3 of the 10,000 ideas will revolutionize the system.
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Growing Lemons - 10 Best/ 10 Worst Cars
Ever wonder why so many ugly, boring cars make it to the market? Working with General Motors, PhD student Ted Hanawalt studied the ten best and ten worst cars in the last 50 years, all defined relative to the market objectives for these offerings. The oldest success was the 1955 Chevy and the newest the 2003 Cadillac CTS, but he also included the Edsel, Pinto, and Pontiac Aztec. Success or failure depends on how decisions are made, how quickly they can be executed, and a bit of luck.
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Transformation in the Retail Industry
Here’s a market opportunity. The market has doubled in the last 10 years. Profits have remained flat. Half of the publicly-listed companies have disappeared. Welcome to retail! Tennenbaum Institute PhD student Dominie Garcia studied this transformation. The central element of success – and many failures – was leadership. It was not just a case of leaders articulating a vision and cheerleading. The key was leadership involvement – walking the talk with some regularity.
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Going Mobile - The Value and Impact of Mobile ICT
There seems to be no limit to being connected. Considering this trend, it is easy to imagine mobile enterprises whereby members of the organization have access to the full spectrum of the enterprise’s assets anywhere, any time. Tennenbaum Institute PhD student Rahul Basole studied this possibility. He assessed the extent to which enterprises seeking mobility are ready to adopt this set of technologies. Drawing on the expertise of a large set of global mobility researchers and practitioners, a online tool was developed for assessing the readiness of an enterprise to successfully become mobile.
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Value Network Complexity
Value in the services economy is driven and determined by consumers and delivered through a complex web of relationships. We have developed a conceptual model for understanding the nature, delivery, and exchange of service value and assessing value network complexity.
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R&D World for Forestry Industry
How should you invest your R&D monies to maximize the return to your company? This question is perennial issue for Chief Technology Officers (CTO) in many industries. Working with the forest products industry, Dr. Doug Bodner of the Tennenbaum Institute research staff developed an organizational simulation – R&D World – that represents the flow of ideas, projects, and results through a corporation. He was able to show a large audience of CTOs how the nuances of these investment decisions tremendously impact corporate profits.
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Faster and Cheaper - The Transformation of Shipbuilding
Let’s say you want to buy an aircraft carrier. How quickly could you get one? PhD student Mike Pennock and researcher Diane Kollar found an amazing answer. If military ships could be produced in zero time, it would take three years to get one! This time is consumed by the process of buying ships. What if we could streamline this process? Even if the likelihood of success were small, they found that the payoff is sufficiently huge to easily justify the investment. Put simply, investments in ships are more valuable if you buy them more efficiently.
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Time to Market - A Study of the IBM Server Business
How can you accelerate time to market, getting there just in time and ahead of the competition? Working with IBM, Dr. Doug Bodner of the Tennenbaum Institute research staff developed an organizational simulation of their XSeries server business and showed how the allocation of engineering competencies could reduce time to market by almost 50%. Teamed with IBM researchers, Doug showed that supporting the social network of how work gets done makes a huge difference in the results.
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Build to Order
The idea of your computer not being built until you order it does not seem that unusual, thanks to Dell. How about your car? Tennenbaum Institute M.S. student Sebastien Kleinau compared seven computer companies to six automobile companies. The computer companies dramatically decreased inventories, a benefit not realized by the car companies. Why not? They could not “lean” their distribution network like computer companies. Good news though. They could sell more expensive and more profitable cars when they could provide them quickly.
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Where's the Store? - A Study of Retail Locations
Our economy is fueled by consumerism. Retail stores are everywhere. Not really. Working with Dollar General, a Tennenbaum Institute team of professor Nicoleta Serban and PhD students Dominie Garcia, Hujing Jiang and Baabak Ashuri are studying the competitive problem of entering retail markets and locating new retail stores. Not surprisingly, the best investment decisions depend on the nature of the area, the characteristics of the store, and who else is there to compete. There is another complication by the way – all these things change in time.
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Emergency Response: A Study of Enterprise Collaboration
When a disaster or other large-scale emergency, many non-governmental organizations deploy their human and financial resources to help relief efforts. There are often overlapping and conflicting missions and initiatives, both to deploy relief and attract financial resources to support these efforts. Tennenbaum Institute PhD student Clarence Wardell is developing simulation models to improve NGO coordination by optimizing the allocation of resources and deployment of relief efforts.
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