Product proliferation has become a common phenomenon. Most companies now offer hundreds, if not thousands, of stock keeping units (SKUs) in order to compete in the market place. Companies with expanding product and service varieties face with problems of obtaining accurate demand forecasts, controlling production and inventory costs, and providing high quality and good delivery performance for the customers. Marketing managers often advocate widening product lines for increasing revenue and market share. However, the breadth of product line can also decrease the efficiency of manufacturing processes and distribution systems. Thus firms must weigh the benefits of product variety against its cost in order to determine the optimal level of product variety to offer to their customers. Academics and practitioners are interested in several fundamental questions about product variety. For instance, why do companies extend their product lines? Do consumers care about product variety? Will a brand with more variety enjoy higher market share? How should product variety be measured? How can a company exploit its product and process design to deliver a higher level of product variety quickly and cheaply? What should the level of product variety be and what should the price of each of the product variants be? What kind of 'challenges would a company face in offering a high level of product variety and how can these obstacles be overcome? The solutions to these questions span multiple functions and disciplines.

From the Foreword by Marshall Fisher, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania: As generation of academics and practitioners follows generation, it is worthwhile to compile long views of the research and practice in the past to shed light on research and practice going forward. This collection of peer-reviewed articles is intended to provide such a long view. This book contains a collection of chapters written by leading scholars/practitioners who have continued their efforts in developing and/or implementing innovative OR/MS tools for solving real world problems. In this book, the contributors share their perspectives about the past, present and future of OR/MS theoretical development, solution tools, modeling approaches, and applications. Specifically, this book collects chapters that offer insights about the following topics: • Survey articles taking a long view over the past two or more decades to arrive at the present state of the art while outlining ideas for future research. Surveys focus on use of a particular OR/MS approach, e.g., mathematical programming (LP, MILP, etc.) and solution methods for particular family of application, e.g., distribution system design, distribution planning system, health care. • Autobiographical or biographical accounts of how particular inventions (e.g., Structured Modeling) were made. These could include personal experiences in early development of OR/MS and an overview of what has happened since. • Development of OR/MS mathematical tools (e.g., stochastic programming, optimization theory). • Development of OR/MS in a particular industry sector such as global supply chain management. • Modeling systems for OR/MS and their development over time as well as speculation on future development (e.g., LINDO, LINGO, and What’sBest!) • New applications of OR/MS models (e.g., happiness) The target audience of this book is young researchers, graduate/advanced undergraduate students from OR/MS and related fields like computer science, engineering, and management as well as practitioners who want to understand how OR/MS modeling came about over the past few decades and what research topics or modeling approaches they could pursue in research or application.

HP sells configure-to-order products. With millions of part combinations going into an order, the challenge is deciding which parts to keep in the portfolio to balance costs with revenues. The case explains how one would approach this problem before product introduction, but focuses on managing the existing portfolio. Students will develop a systematic, data-driven approach to decide on the best product portfolio to sell for a configure-to-order business. Which SKUs are candidates for a "global core" product offering? For an extended offering? For elimination?

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In the fall of 1930, David Packard left his hometown of Pueblo, Colorado, to enroll at Stanford University, where he befriended another freshman, Bill Hewlett. After graduation, Hewlett and Packard decided to throw their lots in together. They tossed a coin to decide whose name should go first on the notice of incorporation, then cast about in search of products to sell. Today, the one-car garage in Palo Alto that housed their first workshop is a California historic landmark: the birthplace of Silicon Valley. And Hewlett-Packard has produced thousands of innovative products for millions of customers throughout the world. Their little company employs 98,400 people and boasts constantly increasing sales that reached $25 billion in 1994. While there are many successful companies, there is only one Hewlett-Packard, because from the very beginning, Hewlett and Packard had a way of doing things that was contrary to the prevailing management strategies. In defining the objectives for their company, Packard and Hewlett wanted more than profits, revenue growth and a constant stream of new, happy customers. Hewlett-Packard's success owes a great deal to many factors, including openness to change, an unrelenting will to win, the virtue of sustained hard work and a company-wide commitment to community involvement. As a result, HP now is universally acclaimed as the world's most admired technology company; its wildly successful approach to business has been immortalized as The HP Way. In this book, David Packard tells the simple yet extraordinary story of his life's work and of the truly exceptional company that he and Bill Hewlett started in a garage 55 years ago.

This proceedings volume presents the latest research from the worldwide mass customization, personalization and co-creation (MCPC) community bringing together new thoughts and results from various disciplines within the field. The chapters are based on papers from The MCPC 2015 Conference where the emphasis was placed on “managing complexity.” MCPC is now beginning to emerge in many industries as a profitable business model. But customization and personalization go far beyond the sheer individualization of products and become an extension of current business models and production styles. This book covers topics such as complexity management of knowledge-based systems in manufacturing design and production, sustainable mass customization, choice navigation, and product modeling. The chapters are contributed by a wide range of specialists, offering cutting-edge research, as well as insightful advances in industrial practice in key areas. The MCPC 2015 Conference had a strong focus on real life MCPC applications, and this proceedings volume reflects this. MCPC strategies aim to profit from the fact that people are different. Their objective is to turn customer heterogeneities into profit opportunities, hence addressing the current trend of long tail business models. Mass customization means to provide goods and services that best serve individual customers’ personal needs with near mass production efficiency. This book brings together the latest from MCPC thought leaders, entrepreneurs, technology developers, and researchers that use these strategies in practice.

First published in 1998, this volume of readings provides an overview of the development of the study of Management Control theory over the past 35 years. The period encompasses the publication of a major and seminal text by Anthony and Dearden in 1965, which acted as a touchstone in defining the range and scope of management control systems. This laid management control’s foundations in accounting-based mechanisms of control, an element which has been seen as both a strength and a constraint. A good deal of work has followed, providing both a development of the tradition as well as a critique. In this volume we attempt to provide a range of readings which will illustrate the variety of possibilities that are available to researchers, scholars and practitioners in the area. The readings illustrate the view that sees control as goal directed and integrative. They go on to explore the idea of control as adaption, consider its relationship with social structure and survey the effects of the interplay between the organisation and the environment. The essays included are not intended to lead the reader through a well-ordered argument which concludes with a well reasoned view of how management control should be. Instead it seeks to illustrate the many questions which have been posed but not answered and to open up agendas for future research.