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Pittsburgh Executive Series Presents: Integrating Customer Needs in Operational Decision Making: From Lean Operations to Lean Value Chains
Presented by Fritz K. Pil from the Katz Graduate School of Business and Jayant Rajgopal from the Swanson School of Engineering.
The ideal value chain attains not just efficiency and cost optimization, but leverages responsiveness to customer needs to ensure superior organizational outcomes. At the operational level, responsiveness involves meeting customer demand from a time and volume standpoint. This requires establishing a clear linkage between customer needs and organizational capabilities, and leveraging appropriate analytic tools to ensure optimal decision making. At the value chain level, understanding the customer enables organizations to rethink traditional performance trade-offs and leverage superior operations to enhance system-wide performance.
In the first part of this presentation, we provide an example of the nuts and bolts of designing and operating a supply chain for a large steel company that must meet nationwide demand that occurs in a stochastic (semi-random) fashion. From there we will discuss how lean or agile operating principles can blind firms to customer needs and discuss the broader challenges in moving to responsive value chains. We will conclude with some examples of how value chain thinking is evolving beyond customer responsiveness.
Event Information
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
5:30 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.
Alumni Hall
5th Floor
4227 Fifth Avenue