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How to Meet Customer Expectations when Demand is High

Strategy Driven

To avoid this, outsource most of the operations you’re not competent at or take a lot of your time. Also, think of outsourcing your human resource, accounting, and manufacturing department. You improve productivity and at the same time have qualified outsourcing companies take care of essential departments.

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Can Lean Manufacturing Put an End to Sweatshops?

Harvard Business Review

To examine this possibility, I conducted research on recent developments in Nike Inc’s apparel supply chain with Jens Hainmueller of Stanford University and Richard M. However, our research suggests that outsourcing production is not inexorably tied to poor workplace conditions. Sponsored by Accenture.

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The Questions Executives Should Ask About 3D Printing

Harvard Business Review

It could upend supply chains, business models, customer relationships, and even entrepreneurship itself. What would be the cost/benefit of flattening your supply chain and moving production closer to your markets? 3D printing is poised to redefine global manufacturing and distribution.

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AI Is Getting Good Enough to Delegate the Work It Can’t Do

Harvard Business Review

It turns out that the results are much better when humans are removed from the decision-making process. Now, algorithms make the decisions and instruct humans throughout the supply chain on which products to make, in what quantities, and where to deliver them.

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4 Models for Using AI to Make Decisions

Harvard Business Review

His group’s data science, procurement, and supply chain teams crafted algorithmic ensembles that, by all measures and simulations, would save hundreds of millions. Even better, they would respond 10 times faster to market moves than existing processes while requiring minimal human intervention. The Autonomous Outsourcer.

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Thinking Through How Automation Will Affect Your Workforce

Harvard Business Review

RPA automates high volume, low complexity, routine administrative “white collar” tasks — the logical successor to outsourcing many administrative processes, further reducing costs and increasing accuracy. Today’s supply chains track the components of products at both an atomized and aggregate level.

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This Coalition of 20 Companies Thinks It Can Change U.S. Health Care

Harvard Business Review

For too long, employers have outsourced management of their employees’ health care benefits to those with little incentive to improve value. The corporations in the HTA are seeking to improve the supply chain for the 4 million people covered by their plans. But what about the other 316 million people in the United States?