management science case study

Top 40 Most Popular Case Studies of 2017

We generated a list of the 40 most popular Yale School of Management case studies in 2017 by combining data from our publishers, Google analytics, and other measures of interest and adoption. In compiling the list, we gave additional weight to usage outside Yale

We generated a list of the 40 most popular Yale School of Management case studies in 2017 by combining data from our publishers, Google analytics, and other measures of interest and adoption. In compiling the list, we gave additional weight to usage outside Yale.

Case topics represented on the list vary widely, but a number are drawn from the case team’s focus on healthcare, asset management, and sustainability. The cases also draw on Yale’s continued emphasis on corporate governance, ethics, and the role of business in state and society. Of note, nearly half of the most popular cases feature a woman as either the main protagonist or, in the case of raw cases where multiple characters take the place of a single protagonist, a major leader within the focal organization. While nearly a fourth of the cases were written in the past year, some of the most popular, including Cadbury and Design at Mayo, date from the early years of our program over a decade ago. Nearly two-thirds of the most popular cases were “raw” cases - Yale’s novel, web-based template which allows for a combination of text, documents, spreadsheets, and videos in a single case website.

Read on to learn more about the top 10 most popular cases followed by a complete list of the top 40 cases of 2017.  A selection of the top 40 cases are available for purchase through our online store . 

#1 - Coffee 2016

Faculty Supervision: Todd Cort

Coffee 2016 asks students to consider the coffee supply chain and generate ideas for what can be done to equalize returns across various stakeholders. The case draws a parallel between coffee and wine. Both beverages encourage connoisseurship, but only wine growers reap a premium for their efforts to ensure quality.  The case describes the history of coffee production across the world, the rise of the “third wave” of coffee consumption in the developed world, the efforts of the Illy Company to help coffee growers, and the differences between “fair” trade and direct trade. Faculty have found the case provides a wide canvas to discuss supply chain issues, examine marketing practices, and encourage creative solutions to business problems. 

#2 - AXA: Creating New Corporate Responsibility Metrics

Faculty Supervision: Todd Cort and David Bach

The case describes AXA’s corporate responsibility (CR) function. The company, a global leader in insurance and asset management, had distinguished itself in CR since formally establishing a CR unit in 2008. As the case opens, AXA’s CR unit is being moved from the marketing function to the strategy group occasioning a thorough review as to how CR should fit into AXA’s operations and strategy. Students are asked to identify CR issues of particular concern to the company, examine how addressing these issues would add value to the company, and then create metrics that would capture a business unit’s success or failure in addressing the concerns.

#3 - IBM Corporate Service Corps

Faculty Supervision: David Bach in cooperation with University of Ghana Business School and EGADE

The case considers IBM’s Corporate Service Corps (CSC), a program that had become the largest pro bono consulting program in the world. The case describes the program’s triple-benefit: leadership training to the brightest young IBMers, brand recognition for IBM in emerging markets, and community improvement in the areas served by IBM’s host organizations. As the program entered its second decade in 2016, students are asked to consider how the program can be improved. The case allows faculty to lead a discussion about training, marketing in emerging economies, and various ways of providing social benefit. The case highlights the synergies as well as trade-offs between pursuing these triple benefits.

#4 - Cadbury: An Ethical Company Struggles to Insure the Integrity of Its Supply Chain

Faculty Supervision: Ira Millstein

The case describes revelations that the production of cocoa in the Côte d’Ivoire involved child slave labor. These stories hit Cadbury especially hard. Cadbury's culture had been deeply rooted in the religious traditions of the company's founders, and the organization had paid close attention to the welfare of its workers and its sourcing practices. The US Congress was considering legislation that would allow chocolate grown on certified plantations to be labeled “slave labor free,” painting the rest of the industry in a bad light. Chocolate producers had asked for time to rectify the situation, but the extension they negotiated was running out. Students are asked whether Cadbury should join with the industry to lobby for more time?  What else could Cadbury do to ensure its supply chain was ethically managed?

#5 - 360 State Real Options

Faculty Supervision: Matthew Spiegel

In 2010 developer Bruce Becker (SOM ‘85) completed 360 State Street, a major new construction project in downtown New Haven. Just west of the apartment building, a 6,000-square-foot pocket of land from the original parcel remained undeveloped. Becker had a number of alternatives to consider in regards to the site. He also had no obligation to build. He could bide his time. But Becker worried about losing out on rents should he wait too long. Students are asked under what set of circumstances and at what time would it be most advantageous to proceed?

#6 - Design at Mayo

Faculty Supervision: Rodrigo Canales and William Drentell

The case describes how the Mayo Clinic, one of the most prominent hospitals in the world, engaged designers and built a research institute, the Center for Innovation (CFI), to study the processes of healthcare provision. The case documents the many incremental innovations the designers were able to implement and the way designers learned to interact with physicians and vice-versa.

In 2010 there were questions about how the CFI would achieve its stated aspiration of “transformational change” in the healthcare field. Students are asked what would a major change in health care delivery look like? How should the CFI's impact be measured? Were the center's structure and processes appropriate for transformational change? Faculty have found this a great case to discuss institutional obstacles to innovation, the importance of culture in organizational change efforts, and the differences in types of innovation.

This case is freely available to the public.

#7 - Ant Financial

Faculty Supervision: K. Sudhir in cooperation with Renmin University of China School of Business

In 2015, Ant Financial’s MYbank (an offshoot of Jack Ma’s Alibaba company) was looking to extend services to rural areas in China by providing small loans to farmers. Microloans have always been costly for financial institutions to offer to the unbanked (though important in development) but MYbank believed that fintech innovations such as using the internet to communicate with loan applicants and judge their credit worthiness would make the program sustainable. Students are asked whether MYbank could operate the program at scale? Would its big data and technical analysis provide an accurate measure of credit risk for loans to small customers? Could MYbank rely on its new credit-scoring system to reduce operating costs to make the program sustainable?

#8 - Business Leadership in South Africa’s 1994 Reforms

Faculty Supervision: Ian Shapiro

This case examines the role of business in South Africa's historic transition away from apartheid to popular sovereignty. The case provides a previously untold oral history of this key moment in world history, presenting extensive video interviews with business leaders who spearheaded behind-the-scenes negotiations between the African National Congress and the government. Faculty teaching the case have used the material to push students to consider business’s role in a divided society and ask: What factors led business leaders to act to push the country's future away from isolation toward a "high road" of participating in an increasingly globalized economy? What techniques and narratives did they use to keep the two sides talking and resolve the political impasse? And, if business leadership played an important role in the events in South Africa, could they take a similar role elsewhere?

#9 - Shake Shack IPO

Faculty Supervision: Jake Thomas and Geert Rouwenhorst

From an art project in a New York City park, Shake Shack developed a devoted fan base that greeted new Shake Shack locations with cheers and long lines. When Shake Shack went public on January 30, 2015, investors displayed a similar enthusiasm. Opening day investors bid up the $21 per share offering price by 118% to reach $45.90 at closing bell. By the end of May, investors were paying $92.86 per share. Students are asked if this price represented a realistic valuation of the enterprise and if not, what was Shake Shack truly worth? The case provides extensive information on Shake Shack’s marketing, competitors, operations and financials, allowing instructors to weave a wide variety of factors into a valuation of the company.

#10 - Searching for a Search Fund Structure

Faculty Supervision: AJ Wasserstein

This case considers how young entrepreneurs structure search funds to find businesses to take over. The case describes an MBA student who meets with a number of successful search fund entrepreneurs who have taken alternative routes to raising funds. The case considers the issues of partnering, soliciting funds vs. self-funding a search, and joining an incubator. The case provides a platform from which to discuss the pros and cons of various search fund structures.

40 Most Popular Case Studies of 2017

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Applications of Operations Research and Management Science

Case Studies

• © 2015
• G. S. R. Murthy 0

Indian Statistical Institute, Hyderabad, India

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• Presents case studies of industrial applications aimed at helping management apply operations research and statistical tools for optimal decision making
• Illustrates the research and development of solutions, as well as problems experienced with implementation and integration of the solution
• Chapters explore a full range of analytical tools and capabilities found in the field of operations research

Part of the book series: International Series in Operations Research & Management Science (ISOR, volume 229)

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Table of contents (10 chapters)

Front matter, material optimization in web manufacturing.

G. S. R. Murthy

Optimization in PCB Manufacturing

A statistical procedure for minimizing in vivo tests for quality control of vaccines, plant loading and dispatch planning, deckle optimization in paper industry, a scientific tool for workforce management in bpo companies, intelligent modeling and practical solutions, modelling optimum utilization of irrigation resources, statistics for measuring tyre contact patch, a case study that lead to new designs, back matter.

• Decision Support System
• Industrial Applications
• Management Science
• Operations Research
• Productivity
• Quality Management

About this book

This book includes case studies that examine the application of operations research to improve or increase efficiency in industry and operational activities. This collection of “living case studies” is all based on the author’s 30-year career of consulting and advisory work. These true-to life industrial applications illustrate the research and development of solutions, as well as potential implementation and integration problems that may occur when adopting these methods into a business. Among the topics covered in the chapters include optimization in circuit board manufacturing, Decision Support System (DSS) for plant loading and dispatch planning, as well as development of important test procedures for tyre and pharma industry with shelf life constraints. In particular, the study on deckle optimization should be of great help to managers in paper industry and consultants for development of deckle optimization software. The application of operations research throughout the industry makes it an ideal guide for industrial executives, professionals and practitioners responsible for quality and productivity improvement.

Authors and Affiliations

About the author.

Dr. Murthy is a senior faculty member at the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Hyderabad. He received his degrees, Bachelor of Statistics (Honours), Master of Statistics, PG Diploma and Ph. D. (in Operations Research) from the Indian Statistical Institute. He has been serving Indian industries, covering a wide variety, over past three decades. Besides training industrial personnel on applications of Statistics and Operations Research, he has undertaken a large number of projects and guided a number of project teams. He has special flair for development of decision support systems and contributed significantly to live projects from industry. His works on estimation of power consumption by farmers in the state of erstwhile Andhra Pradesh which included a state wide survey and development of robust estimation methodology and his contributions to surveys on quality of drugs in India speak of his passion for applied works related projects of national interests.

Dr. Murthy believes that keeping in constant touch with academics is essential for successful promotion of the subjects to applications. He has been maintaining a parallel profile in academics. His research interests include mathematical programming, stochastic processes, reliability and multivariate analysis. He has more than 25 research publications in international journals and visited foreign universities in connection with col1aborative research work and presented papers in international conferences. Some of his case studies have appeared as chapters in a book edited by Professor Katta G. Murty recently published by Springer. At the request of organizers, Dr. Murthy organized a session on applications of Operations Research in the international conference Modeling and Optimization: Theory and Applications (MOPTA 2014) at Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, USA.

Dr. Murthy enjoys teaching and training. He has trained hundreds of industrial personnel starting from senior executives to shop floor operators on statistical and operations research methodologies. He has been teaching M. Sc. courses on Statistics and Operations Research at University of Hyderabad as guest faculty. He has developed a number of course modules meant for distance education for the undergraduate programmes offered by the Indira Gandhi National Open University.

Bibliographic Information

Book Title : Applications of Operations Research and Management Science

Book Subtitle : Case Studies

Authors : G. S. R. Murthy

Series Title : International Series in Operations Research & Management Science

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17921-6

Publisher : Springer Cham

eBook Packages : Business and Economics , Business and Management (R0)

Copyright Information : Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015

Hardcover ISBN : 978-3-319-17920-9 Published: 25 June 2015

Softcover ISBN : 978-3-319-38581-5 Published: 17 October 2016

eBook ISBN : 978-3-319-17921-6 Published: 15 June 2015

Series ISSN : 0884-8289

Series E-ISSN : 2214-7934

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : XX, 270

Number of Illustrations : 28 b/w illustrations, 88 illustrations in colour

Topics : Operations Research/Decision Theory , Operations Management , Operations Research, Management Science

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Introduction to Management Science: A Modeling and Case Studies Approach with Spreadsheets Hardcover – January 1, 2013

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• Language English
• Publisher McGraw-Hill Irwin
• Publication date January 1, 2013
• Dimensions 8.7 x 1.1 x 11.1 inches
• ISBN-10 0078024064
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ McGraw-Hill Irwin; 5th edition (January 1, 2013)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0078024064
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0078024061
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 3.5 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.7 x 1.1 x 11.1 inches
• Best Sellers Rank: #1,547,416 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books )

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Hiller's Management Science and Business Analytics: A Modeling and Case Studies Approach with Spreadsheets , 7e in its newest edition introduces both Management Science and Business Analytics in chapter 1 emphasizing the close relationship between them. The new Chapter 2 is an overview of how MS and BA professionals analyze problems and their similarities, chapter 3 is a new chapter on the role of data mining, clustering classification prediction methodology, some algorithms for implementing this methodology, a powerful SW package for data mining and more.  Chapter 4 will continue to focus on key techniques of Business Analytics to complete part 1 of the text and the final chapters are focused on Prescriptive and Predictive Analytics based on models based on Linear programming models, Other Certainty Models, and Uncertainty Models.

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About the Author

Frederick Hillier

Professor emeritus of operations research at Stanford University. Dr. Hillier is especially known for his classic, award-winning text, Introduction to Operations Research, co-authored with the late Gerald J. Lieberman, which has been translated into well over a dozen languages and is currently in its 8th edition. The 6th edition won honorable mention for the 1995 Lanchester Prize (best English-language publication of any kind in the field) and Dr. Hillier also was awarded the 2004 INFORMS Expository Writing Award for the 8th edition. His other books include The Evaluation of Risky Interrelated Investments, Queueing Tables and Graphs, Introduction to Stochastic Models in Operations Research, and Introduction to Mathematical Programming. He received his BS in industrial engineering and doctorate specializing in operations research and management science from Stanford University. The winner of many awards in high school and college for writing, mathematics, debate, and music, he ranked first in his undergraduate engineering class and was awarded three national fellowships (National Science Foundation, Tau Beta Pi, and Danforth) for graduate study. Dr. Hillier’s research has extended into a variety of areas, including integer programming, queueing theory and its application, statistical quality control, and production and operations management. He also has won a major prize for research in capital budgeting.

Mark Hillier

Associate professor of quantitative methods at the School of Business at the University of Washington. Dr. Hillier received his BS in engineering (plus a concentration in computer science) from Swarthmore College, and he received his MS with distinction in operations research and PhD in industrial engineering and engineering management from Stanford University. As an undergraduate, he won the McCabe Award for ranking first in his engineering class, won election to Phi Beta Kappa based on his work in mathematics, set school records on the men’s swim team, and was awarded two national fellowships (National Science Foundation and Tau Beta Pi) for graduate study. During that time, he also developed a comprehensive software tutorial package, OR Courseware, for the Hillier-Lieberman textbook, Introduction to Operations Research. As a graduate student, he taught a PhD-level seminar in operations management at Stanford and won a national prize for work based on his PhD dissertation. At the University of Washington, he currently teaches courses in management science and spreadsheet modeling.

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Hot Oceans Worsened Dubai’s Dramatic Flooding, Scientists Say

An international team of researchers found that heavy rains had intensified in the region, though they couldn’t say for sure how much climate change was responsible.

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By Raymond Zhong

Scenes of flood-ravaged neighborhoods in one of the planet’s driest regions stunned the world this month. Heavy rains in the United Arab Emirates and Oman submerged cars, clogged highways and killed at least 21 people. Flights out of Dubai’s airport, a major global hub, were severely disrupted.

The downpours weren’t a total surprise — forecasters had anticipated the storms several days earlier and issued warnings. But they were certainly unusual.

Here’s what to know.

Heavy rain there is rare, but not unheard-of.

On average, the Arabian Peninsula receives a scant few inches of rain a year, although scientists have found that a sizable chunk of that precipitation falls in infrequent but severe bursts, not as periodic showers. These rains often come during El Niño conditions like the ones the world is experiencing now.

U.A.E. officials said the 24-hour rain total on April 16 was the country’s largest since records there began in 1949 . And parts of the nation had already experienced an earlier round of thunderstorms in March.

Oman, with its coastline on the Arabian Sea, is also vulnerable to tropical cyclones. Past storms there have brought torrential rain, powerful winds and mudslides, causing extensive damage.

Global warming is projected to intensify downpours.

Stronger storms are a key consequence of human-caused global warming. As the atmosphere gets hotter, it can hold more moisture, which can eventually make its way down to the earth as rain or snow.

But that doesn’t mean rainfall patterns are changing in precisely the same way across every part of the globe.

In their latest assessment of climate research , scientists convened by the United Nations found there wasn’t enough data to have firm conclusions about rainfall trends in the Arabian Peninsula and how climate change was affecting them. The researchers said, however, that if global warming were to be allowed to continue worsening in the coming decades, extreme downpours in the region would quite likely become more intense and more frequent.

Hot oceans are a big factor.

An international team of scientists has made a first attempt at estimating the extent to which climate change may have contributed to April’s storms. The researchers didn’t manage to pin down the connection precisely, though in their analysis, they did highlight one known driver of heavy rain in the region: above-normal ocean temperatures.

Large parts of the Indian, Pacific and Atlantic Oceans have been hotter than usual recently, in part because of El Niño and other natural weather cycles, and in part because of human-induced warming .

When looking only at El Niño years, the scientists estimated that storm events as infrequent as this month’s delivered 10 percent to 40 percent more rain to the region than they would in a world that hadn’t been warmed by human activities. They cautioned, however, that these estimates were highly uncertain.

“Rainfall, in general, is getting more extreme,” said Mansour Almazroui, a climate scientist at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and one of the researchers who contributed to the analysis.

The analysis was conducted by scientists affiliated with World Weather Attribution, a research collaboration that studies extreme weather events shortly after they occur. Their findings about this month’s rains haven’t yet been peer reviewed, but are based on standardized methods .

The role of cloud seeding isn’t clear.

The U.A.E. has for decades worked to increase rainfall and boost water supplies by seeding clouds. Essentially, this involves shooting particles into clouds to encourage the moisture to gather into larger, heavier droplets, ones that are more likely to fall as rain or snow.

Cloud seeding and other rain-enhancement methods have been tried around the world, including in Australia, China, India, Israel, South Africa and the United States. Studies have found that these operations can, at best, affect precipitation modestly — enough to turn a downpour into a bigger downpour, but probably not a drizzle into a deluge.

Still, experts said pinning down how much seeding might have contributed to this month’s storms would require detailed study.

“In general, it is quite a challenge to assess the impact of seeding,” said Luca Delle Monache, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif. Dr. Delle Monache has been leading efforts to use artificial intelligence to improve the U.A.E.’s rain-enhancement program.

An official with the U.A.E.’s National Center of Meteorology, Omar Al Yazeedi, told news outlets that the agency didn’t conduct any seeding during the latest storms. His statements didn’t make clear, however, whether that was also true in the hours or days before.

Mr. Al Yazeedi didn’t respond to emailed questions from The New York Times, and Adel Kamal, a spokesman for the center, didn’t have further comment.

Cities in dry places just aren’t designed for floods.

Wherever it happens, flooding isn’t just a matter of how much rain comes down. It’s also about what happens to all that water once it’s on the ground — most critically, in the places people live.

Cities in arid regions often aren’t designed to drain very effectively. In these areas, paved surfaces block rain from seeping into the earth below, forcing it into drainage systems that can easily become overwhelmed.

One recent study of Sharjah , the capital of the third-largest emirate in the U.A.E., found that the city’s rapid growth over the past half-century had made it vulnerable to flooding at far lower levels of rain than before.

Omnia Al Desoukie contributed reporting.

Raymond Zhong reports on climate and environmental issues for The Times. More about Raymond Zhong