Vidhee Avashia, Sundaravalli Narayanaswami and Anurag Saxena
The subject area is operations management.
Abstract
Subject area
The subject area is operations management.
Study level/applicability
The case is to be used at master’s level, for example, MBA courses on operations management, operations research, logistics management and supply chain management.
Case overview
It was the morning of 20 September 2012 and the three directors of Distromed Bioclean Pvt. Ltd. were in the office discussing the developments from past night’s meeting with the Rajkot Chapter of the Indian Medical Association. They are a bio-medical waste treatment facility involved in collection, treatment and disposal services and charge yearly subscription fees. On 13 September 2012, fuel prices had gone up consecutively for the second year. Last year, the doctors resisted the fee hike and seemed reluctant this year again. In response, management of the company was looking for ways to minimize the total distance travelled by its fleet to reduce the operating cost.
Expected learning outcomes
The paper enables illustration of concepts of routing/scheduling and generation of optimal solutions in a realistic setting; and developing the understanding regarding the travelling salesman problem, Chinese postman problem and the entire family of vehicle routing problems and vehicle scheduling problems.
Supplementary materials
Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.
Subject code
CSS 9: Operations and Logistics.
Details
Keywords
New services design and development are difficult to plan, execute, measure and evaluate. Particularly, new services that are capital-intensive and involve a long gestation and…
Abstract
Purpose
New services design and development are difficult to plan, execute, measure and evaluate. Particularly, new services that are capital-intensive and involve a long gestation and development time are considered extremely risky. The purpose of this paper is to discuss a list of innovative practices in various managerial aspects in designing, planning and development of a large scale infrastructure intensive public transportation service. A contemporary new public transportation service development is discussed as evidence of proven and benchmarked criteria.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a technical paper, where theoretical foundations of best practices in new service development project are discussed and supported by practice-based evidences from a real-life urban transportation project. A case study approach is adopted with secondary data.
Findings
Worldwide during and after economic recession of 2008, several projects were stalled or abandoned. The inference through this work is that through efficient management practices, a large capital-intensive new service development project can be made successful even during a turbulent economy in a region marred by more challenges than elsewhere.
Practical implications
Several issues in large scale services development, such as urban transportation are domain specific. Some of the issues faced in urban transportation are common to several Gulf countries; therefore the policy guidelines, managerial practices and development strategies reported in this paper can be replicated in many of them. The commercial impact of the service project is a significant drive towards fuel conservation and to save huge amounts of productive time.
Social implications
Public transportation with a high quality of networked service improves the quality of life to a large extent. Unless certain measurable demands are not met, an affluent society is less likely to endorse public transportation. In addition, endorsement of public transportation is been promoted in several parts of the world as a drive towards a green, energy efficient, low-carbon emission and sustainable environment.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, new services planning and development is a key operations management topic, on which very little is written about. Particularly no other paper has presented a real-world large scale infrastructure intensive project development to this detail, and along with a theoretical background to benchmark performance and development practices.
Details
Keywords
Divakar Maurya, Anand Patil, Gurpreet Singh, Atishaya Jain and Sundaravalli Narayanaswami
Indian Railways (IR) has been slow in innovation. The competition from other modes of transport has posed new challenges to IR. Railways worldwide have taken help from startups to…
Abstract
Indian Railways (IR) has been slow in innovation. The competition from other modes of transport has posed new challenges to IR. Railways worldwide have taken help from startups to develop innovative solutions to improve railway operations. Such collaborations have helped in leveraging the technical expertise of startups in domains which are non-conventional for railways to develop in-house. These collaborations have been made possible by funding startups through various investment channels.
Details
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Keywords
Sundaravalli Narayanaswami and N Ravichandran
Jarsh Safety received an order of 500 units of its Model S helmet. However, the order must be delivered within 15 days. Jarsh Safety was founded by three engineering college…
Abstract
Jarsh Safety received an order of 500 units of its Model S helmet. However, the order must be delivered within 15 days. Jarsh Safety was founded by three engineering college peers, who conceptualized air-conditioned, industrial safety helmets. This innovative revolutionary product offered industrial workers not only safety but aesthetics and comfort. The founders hoped that the product could change the perception of safety helmets from mandatory wear to desired wear. The case details the production process, staffing, raw material required and procurement lead time.
Details
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