Operations Rules: Delivering Customer Value through Flexible Operations

In recent years, management gurus have urged businesses to adopt such strategies as just-in-time, lean manufacturing, offshoring, and frequent deliveries to retail outlets. But today, these much-touted strategies may be risky. Global financial turmoil, rising labor costs in developing countries, and huge volatility in the price of oil and other commodities can disrupt a company's entire supply chain and threaten its ability to compete. In Operations Rules, David Simchi-Levi identifies the crucial element in a company's success: the link between the value it provides its customers and its operations strategies. And he offers a set of scientifically and empirically based rules that management can follow to achieve a quantum leap in operations performance. Flexibility, says Simchi-Levi, is the single most important capability that allows firms to innovate in their operations and supply chain strategies. A small investment in flexibility can achieve almost all the benefits of full flexibility. And successful companies do not all pursue the same strategies. Amazon and Wal-Mart, for example, are direct competitors but each focuses on a different market channel and provides a unique customer value proposition--Amazon, large selection and reliable fulfillment; Wal-Mart, low prices--that directly aligns with its operations strategy. Simchi-Levi's rules--regarding such issues as channels, price, product characteristics, value-added service, procurement strategy, and information technology--transform operations and supply chain management from an undertaking based on gut feeling and anecdotes to a science.

About the Author

Professor David Simchi-Levi of MIT is considered one of the premier thought leaders in supply chain management. Dr. Simchi-Levi holds a Ph.D. from Tel Aviv University. His research currently focuses on developing and implementing robust and efficient techniques for logistics and manufacturing systems. He has published widely in professional journals on both practical and theoretical aspects of logistics and supply chain management.

Simchi-Levi has been the principal investigator for more than five million dollars in funded academic research. He is the editor-in-chief of Operations Research, the flagship journal of Informs, the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences.

He was the co-founder of LogicTools which developed supply chain optimization software and was acquired by ILOG in April 2007 and is now part of IBM where he serves as ILOG Chief Scientist.