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• Case | HBS Case Collection | September 2016 (Revised May 2018)

  United Airlines: More Out-and-Back Flying?

  Ryan W. Buell, Willy Shih and Mike Toffel

  This case looks at United Airlines when it is facing a decision on whether to shift its aircraft routing to more "out-and-back" routing in order to try to improve its on-time performance. As one of the world's largest airlines, United had a very large fleet and hub-and-spoke network that provided passengers with a wide range of destination choices, but as with any complex system unless everything ran perfectly all the time, it inevitably faced cascading delays and missed passenger connection problems. While out-and-back routing tended to isolate operational issues, more traditional linear routings tended to offer high equipment utilization. The case offers students an opportunity to examine the effects of variability on different routing strategies.

  Keywords: service excellence; service delivery; service management; service quality; service quality competition; services; service operations; airline industry; airlines; operational complexity; operational disruptions; operational effectiveness; operations; operations improvement; operations management; operations strategy; Air Transportation; Operations; Service Operations; Service Delivery; Performance Effectiveness; Performance Improvement; Complexity; Air Transportation Industry; United States;

  Citation:

  Buell, Ryan W., Willy Shih, and Mike Toffel. "United Airlines: More Out-and-Back Flying?" Harvard Business School Case 617-010, September 2016. (Revised May 2018.)  View Details

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | May 2016 (Revised April 2018)

  Building the Digital Manufacturing Enterprise of the Future at Siemens

  Willy Shih

  This case describes the motivation for and the development of Siemens' digital manufacturing enterprise vision, which became the foundation for its implementation of Industrie 4.0. While the effort started with a purely defensive move by Anton Huber, head of the Digital Factory Division, to protect his core programmable logic controller business from the migration of value to software from hardware, the scope expanded radically as the company completed the acquisition of UGS. It was then able to articulate a complete roadmap from computer-aided product inception and design through simulation and automation system design all the way to the factory floor. The initial implementation at the Electronics Works Amberg became widely cited as the prototype for Industrie 4.0.
  The central question of the case is the importance of vertical integration to the delivery of the vision, in the face of pressure for open standards that will expose large parts of the system to competition and price pressure. How will Siemens earn a reasonable rate of return?

  Keywords: big data; Internet of Things; internet of everything; Industrie 4.0; digital factory; digital enterprise; digital manufacturing; manufacturing; Production management; Production Planning; Computer software; Germany; German manufacturing; Machinery and Machining; Information Technology; Technology Platform; Technological Innovation; Production; Supply Chain; Life Cycle; Software; Technology Networks; Manufacturing Industry; Germany;

  Citation:

  Shih, Willy. "Building the Digital Manufacturing Enterprise of the Future at Siemens." Harvard Business School Case 616-060, May 2016. (Revised April 2018.)  View Details

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | December 2014 (Revised April 2018)

  Dalian Wanda Group: The AMC Entertainment Acquisition (A)

  Willy Shih

  When Dalian Wanda Group of China announced its plan to acquire the AMC Entertainment theatrical exhibition chain in the United States, many people in the U.S. were mystified. Unlike China where theatrical exhibition was experiencing rapid growth, the U.S. market was viewed as mature, and rapidly changing technology was giving consumers a widening range of choices for movie viewing. AMC was owned by a group of private equity firms, and their pessimistic view of the industry influenced their strategies and investment decisions. AMC's management team had yet a different view on the prospects of the industry. Thus three present or potential stakeholders, all looking at the same data, had distinctly different views of future prospects. How could this be? The (B) case looks at AMC's performance in the year after the acquisition.

  Keywords: Dalian Wanda Group; AMC Entertainment; Wang Jianlin; Theater Entertainment; Film Entertainment; Acquisition; Mergers and Acquisitions; Foreign Direct Investment; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Growth and Development Strategy; Business Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Expansion; Motion Pictures and Video Industry; China; United States;

  Citation:

  Shih, Willy. "Dalian Wanda Group: The AMC Entertainment Acquisition (A)." Harvard Business School Case 615-033, December 2014. (Revised April 2018.)  View Details

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