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MANAGING PROJECTS

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Projects represent nonroutine business activities that often have long-term strategic ramifications for a firm. In this chapter, we examined how projects differ from routine business activities and discussed the major phases of projects. We noted how environmental changes have resulted in increased attention being paid to projects and project management over the past decade. In the second half of the chapter, we introduced some basic tools that businesses can use when planning for and controlling projects. Both Gantt charts and network diagrams give managers a visual picture of how a project is going. Network diagrams have the added advantage of showing the precedence between activities, as well as the critical path(s). We wrapped up the chapter by showing how these concepts are embedded in inexpensive yet powerful software packages such as Microsoft Project. If you want to learn more about project management, we encourage you to take a look at the Web site for the Proj...
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Creating Brand Equity

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A brand is a name, term, sign, symbol, design, or some combination of these elements, intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competitors. The different components of a brand—brand names, logos, symbols, package designs, and so on—are brand elements.
Brands are valuable intangible assets that offer a number of benefits to customers and firms and need to be managed carefully. The key to branding is that consumers perceive differences among brands in a product category.
Brand equity should be defined in terms of marketing effects uniquely attributable to a brand. That is, different outcomes result in the marketing of a product or service because of its brand, compared to the results if that same product or service was not identified by that brand.
Building brand equity depends on three main factors: (1) The initial choices for the brand elements or identities making up the brand; (2) the way the brand is integrated into the supporting marketing program; and (3) the associations indirectly transferred to the brand by links to some other entity (the company, country of origin, channel of distribution, or another brand).
Brand audits measure “where the brand has been,” and tracking studies measure “where the brand is now” and whether marketing programs are having the intended effects.
A branding strategy identifies which brand elements a firm chooses to apply across the various products it sells. In a brand extension, a firm uses an established brand name to introduce a new product. Potential extensions must be judged by how effectively they leverage existing brand equity to a new product, as well as how effectively they contribute to the equity of the parent brand in turn.
Brands may expand coverage, provide protection, extend an image, or fulfill a variety of other roles for the firm. Each brand-name product must have a welldefined positioning to maximize coverage, minimize overlap, and thus optimize the portfolio.
Customer equity is a complementary concept to brand equity that reflects the sum of lifetime values of all customers for a brand.

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OPERATIONS AND SUPPLY CHAIN STRATEGIES

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MANAGING QUALITY

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As an area of intense business interest, quality is here to stay. Operations and supply chain personnel in particular need to be familiar with the major quality topic areas, including the different philosophical perspectives on quality and the tools used to manage quality levels on a day-to-day basis. In this chapter, we gave you a solid introduction to quality topics, ranging from high-level discussions of quality issues to detailed descriptions of tools and techniques. We started by defining quality and describing a total cost of quality model. We then presented an overview of total quality management (TQM), as well as a section on statistical quality control (SQC). We ended the chapter with a discussion of how organizations manage quality across the supply chain and some of the issues they face. We encourage you not to let your quality education end here. The American Society for Quality ( www.asq.org ), the Juran Institute ( www.juran.com ), the W. Edwards Deming Institute ( www....
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INTRODUCTION to OPERATIONS and SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT

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Operations and supply chains are pervasive in business. Every organization must provide a product or service that someone values. This is the primary responsibility of the operations function. Furthermore, most organizations do not function independently but find that their activities are linked with those of other organizations through supply chains. Careful management of operations and supply chains is, therefore, vital to the long-term health of nearly every organization. Because operations and supply chain activities cover everything from planning and control activities to sourcing and logistics, there are numerous career opportunities for students interested in the area. Trends in e-commerce and global competition, as well as the growing importance of maintaining good relationships with other supply chain partners, will only increase these opportunities. Fortunately, there are many professional organizations, including APICS, CSCMP, and ISM, that cater to the career development ...
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Internal Analysis: Resources, Capabilities, and Core Competencies

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BUSINESS PROCESS

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