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Publish or Protect? (Spanish version)
Shih, Willy; Chai, SenCase HBS-615S15Service and Operations ManagementShould they patent inventions coming out of their manufacturing process development work, should they keep them as trade secrets, or should they publish them so that they would go into the public domain and nobody else could patent them? They wish to preserve their freedom to practice, but they are very concerned about competitors' ability to benefit from LEGO Group's R&D investments or alternately interfere with its freedom to operate.Starting at €8.20
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The TSMC Way: Meeting Customer Needs at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.
Shih, Willy; Chien, Chen-Fu; Shih, Chintay; Chang, JackCase HBS-610003-EService and Operations ManagementTo maximize their effectiveness, color cases should be printed in color. When L.C. Tu receives an emergency order, he is confronted with a range of production scheduling choices, each of which has unique costs and trade-offs. The case was designed to help students understand job-shop style production and the impact of disruptions and reactive scheduling. Students use two of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's mainstream processes as a ve...Starting at €8.20
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Building Watson: Not So Elementary, My Dear!
Shih, WillyCase HBS-612017-EService and Operations ManagementTo maximize their effectiveness, color cases should be printed in color. This case is set inside IBM Research's efforts to build a computer that can successfully take on human challengers playing the game show Jeopardy! It opens with the machine named Watson offering the incorrect answer "Toronto" to a seemingly simple question during the championship match. Was the answer a reflection of a strategic weakness, or was it actually consistent with d...Starting at €8.20
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Renesas Electronics and the Automotive Microcontroller Supply Chain (A)
Shih, Willy; Pierson, MargaretCase HBS-612071-EService and Operations ManagementTo maximize their effectiveness, color cases should be printed in color. The magnitude 9.0 earthquake that struck Japan in March, 2011 caused extensive damage to Renesas Electronics wafer fabrication facility, a critical link in the global automotive supply chain. Many OEMs sole-sourced customized microprocessors from the fab so its shutdown forced the "Big Three" of Detroit and Japan to shutdown production as well. Data from two automotive custo...Starting at €8.20
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The LEGO Group: Publish or Protect
Shih, Willy; Chai, SenCase HBS-613079-EService and Operations ManagementSenior managers at the LEGO Group are faced with a quandary: Should they patent inventions coming out of their manufacturing process development work, should they keep them as trade secrets, or should they publish them so that they would go into the public domain and nobody else could patent them? They wish to preserve their freedom to practice, but they are very concerned about competitors' ability to benefit from LEGO Group's R&D investments or...Starting at €8.20
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Ford vs. GM: The Evolution of Mass Production (A)
Shih, WillyCase HBS-614010-EService and Operations ManagementThis case explores the very different paths taken by the Ford Motor Company and the General Motors Corporation in the first three decades of the twentieth century. Henry Ford's Model T was a car for the masses. After considerable experimentation, Ford Motor perfected a mass production system that converted the vast majority of jobs in the factory into routine tasks. It pioneered the moving assembly line, and it pursued processes that became incre...Starting at €8.20
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BGI: Data-driven Research
Shih, Willy; Chai, SenCase HBS-614056-EService and Operations ManagementBGI has the largest installed gene-sequencing capacity in the world, and to Zhang Gengyun, general manager of the Life Sciences Division, this represented an opportunity to apply his training as a plant breeder and his early career work as a biochemist to improving important parts of the world food supply. But his biggest challenge was in scaling up his organization to address the multitude of opportunities he wanted to address. Along with its ma...Starting at €8.20
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Alnylam Pharmaceuticals: Building Value from the IP Estate (B)
Sato, Vicki L.; Shih, Willy; Higgins, MattCase HBS-617022-EService and Operations ManagementThe leader of a pioneering biotech company in the siRNA space weighs his options for scaling production capacity in advance of an anticipated commercial launch. Operational complexity and relative merits of in-house manufacturing versus a contractor model are discussed.Starting at €5.74
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Flex Hungary: Launching Production (A)
Shih, WillyCase HBS-618002-EService and Operations ManagementThis case examines design choices in the construction of flow lines. Flow lines are a popular way of arranging production because they are simple and inherently efficient. Equipment or workstations are arranged according to the sequence of steps in which a product is made. Each step consists of a set of tasks that individually are minimum rational work elements. These are combined to form the work assignment associated with the step. The work fol...Starting at €8.20
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AMD Dresden: Copy Inexactly!
Shih, WillyCase HBS-609004-EService and Operations ManagementTo maximize their effectiveness, color cases should be printed in color. The establishment and growth of AMD's Dresden, Germany manufacturing site illustrates how processes develop in an organization, and how those processes get institutionalized into a unique culture. Located in the Free State of Saxony in the eastern part of Germany (the former GDR), AMD's investment in the region leverages a historic and rather unique skill base in engineering...Starting at €8.20