This paper provides exploratory evidence on the cross-sectional association between process management techniques and two profit measures: return on assets and return on sales. Using a sample of firms in two industries (automotive and computer) and four countries (Canada, Germany, Japan, and the...

Component sharing--the use of a component on multiple products within a firm's product line--is widely practiced as a means of offering high variety at low cost. Although many researchers have examined trade-offs involved in component sharing, little research has focused on the impact of...

Internet technology has allowed for a higher degree of decoupling between the information-intensive sales process and the physical process of inventory management than its brick-and-mortar counterpart. As a result, some Internet retailers choose to outsource inventory and back-end operations to...

Using data from the U.S. bicycle industry, we examine the relation among product variety, supply chain structure, and firm performance. Variety imposes two types of costs on a supply chain: production costs and market mediation costs. Production costs include, among other costs, the incremental...

Using detailed data on defect rates and quality costs from twelve plants of a Fortune 500 company, we provide the first direct tests of predictions arising from two sets of dynamic quality-based learning models. We find greater support for quality-based learning models that assume learning is a...

This study examines the impact of product variety on automobile assembly plant performance using data from GM's Wilmington, Delaware plant, together with simulation analyses of a more general auto assembly line. We extend prior product variety studies by providing evidence on the magnitude of...