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Breaking the Death Grip of Legacy Technologies

Harvard Business Review

Technologies like 3-D printing, robotics, advanced motion controls, and new methods for continuous manufacturing hold great potential for improving how companies design and build products to better serve customers. Why are older incumbent firms slow to adopt new technologies even when the economic or strategic benefits are clear?

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Can Lean Manufacturing Put an End to Sweatshops?

Harvard Business Review

Producers in less-developed countries compete by keeping costs low. It involves replacing traditional mass manufacturing with “lean manufacturing” principles. In addition to improved product quality and delivery times, the lean approach has been linked to improved terms of employment. Insight Center.

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Innovating the Toyota, and YouTube, Way

Harvard Business Review

In terms of people, processes and technologies, Toyota and Google's YouTube have little in common. The more deeply Jim's essays discussed the nature of supplier relationships, work-flow and value creation in lean enterprise, the keener the connection with YouTube's Space. They don't just partner; they provide resources that add value.

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B-Schools Aren’t Bothering to Produce HR Experts

Harvard Business Review

In the 1980s, our organizations learned a great deal about how to improve productivity, quality, and costs from Japanese practices. That would never fly in marketing, operations research, or even accounting, where academics are all over new developments. A few decades ago, U.S. Let me explain. So schools need to step up.

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The Coherent Conglomerate

Harvard Business Review

2 in its market; he also insisted that every business provide value no competitor could match, and that they all should be able to gain leverage from GE's distinctive strength in complex, engineering-intensive industrial enterprises — or they wouldn't fit. We have seen the market penalize that approach.

Welch 8
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What You Won’t Hear About Trade and Manufacturing on the Campaign Trail

Harvard Business Review

Generally, what we see is the country where the final assembly of a product took place. Almost every sophisticated manufacturer uses some kind of lean production system that pulls raw materials in from a warehouse. A big reason is technological complexity. Regions that have thick markets of suppliers have a big advantage.