You’d laugh, after all that leanness, JIT etc., “slack” is in again. (No, not Nigel Slack’s book on ops mgmt, though that one can be recommended, too.) Steven Melnyk actually went the extra mile to collect arguments why slack would be important in a supply chain, to enhance innovation capabilities, be “less fragile” - just one term is lacking, be more agile 
Gyöngyi
Categories: Academic publications · Innovation · Supply Chain Management
Radiohead is giving their new album away by allowing free download (+ admin fee) from their website.
Prince gave away his new album in July this year with the newspaper The Mail on Sunday.
And from music to books that are of interest for a number of SCM scholars:
von Hippel’s Democratizing Innovation from 2005 can also be downloaded here in a .pdf form, or alternatively bought at Amazon.
Going Backwards: Reverse Logistics Trends and Practices by Dale Rogers and Ronald Tibben-Lembke is also available in a .pdf format.
Wonder when (or perhaps there already are?) MP3 players or mobile phones allow you to read pieces of a book in a suitable format (including notetaking)?
Product development, where art thou?
Árni
Categories: Innovation · Product development · supply chain
In one of the message boards for Land Rover enthusiaists (discussing the difference between two engines, the 200tdi and 300tdi, and cambelt problems), you find this comment:
Admitted, I am a wannabe LRO enthusiaist; during 1995-2005 I owned an old lady — a 1972 Series III — in Iceland, which is now (hopefully) being restored by a proud owner in a small village at the north coast of Iceland.
I suspect that many LRO owners enjoy themselves in exploring their vehicles and exchanging war stories. Stories that may result in innovative solutions.
There is a very fine balance between the struggle of repairing common failuers vs. the idea that users participate in the development of the products they use. This latter is discussed further in e.g. von Hippel (2005:74), who asserts the following:
Users can be sophisticated developers within those niches, despite their reliance on their own need information and solution information that they already have in stock. On the need side, recall that user-innovators gener-ally are lead users and generally are expert in the field or activity giving rise to their needs. With respect to solution information, user firms have specialties that may be at a world-class level. (The whole book is downloadable here).
4×4 owners in Iceland have a long story of adapting standard vehicles to local conditions. Substantial changes have been made on various models. Here are few examples:
The Russian GAZ 69 has been modified to suit Icelandic conditions, initially for farmers here, and later for those who wanted to climb the mountains. Another 4×4 from Russia is the Lada Niva Lada Niva, who by few occasions got bigger tires.
One of the most popular 4×4 that was modified is the Ford Bronco (the models made from mid 1960s to mid 1970s). Here is Bronco that has not been modified. The car takes on a different shape with larger tires, and a full-blown version is quite different from the original.
Jeep / Willys were also a popular subject of modifications. In the middle of this picture we have a Willys made in the mid 1940s (photo allegedly taken in 1983), here struggling in a river in Iceland during the Easter break in 1983.
Since we started out by Land Rover, we must also provide a link to some modifications of these vehicles albeit they are relatively rare in Iceland.
Now, what is the point of all this?
In Iceland, there was both need and knowledge that allowed this to happen. Eventually, the interest for this did disseminate into extreme off road motor sport. Take a look at this piece on Youtube - this is from an Icelandic “torfæra”; the cars were modified further for use in competitions in Iceland that eventually caught the interest of international TV viewers of motorsport.
What remains to be explored is whether (and how) this development did catch the attention of the designers and manufacturers in the automotive industry:
Was the experience in Iceland transferred to up-stream levels of the automotive supply chains?
Árni
Categories: Innovation · Product development
Everyone, and every nation, wants to be the number one. No matter in what. Even being the “worst polluter” counts. Now that carbon management has been discussed at the UN’s Security Council and the IPCC had it’s climate change meeting in Bangkok, China was pushed to the centre of attention of being the worst polluter, or the “coming” worst polluter globally. The country’s curve of greenhouse gas emissions (and its costs) follows the general “China curve”, that is an exponential curve over a timeline. As Max von Zedtwitz from Tsinghua University noted today, the running gag in Beijing is that it is healthy to smoke, at least then you breathe through a filter. As to stop smog from blurring the picture in Beijing, CSR Asia’s meeting today focused on public transportation issues - and one of the foci of the group’s next summit is on supply chain management related issues. Other research follows suit, looking at corporate social and environmental responsibility in Chinese supply chains. Maybe instead of a political stalemate, it is through supply chains that a “one planet environmental policy” can emerge - as even stated in the document of the informal meeting of EU environmental ministers in June 2006.
Gyöngyi
Categories: Carbon management · Innovation · Sustainability · environment
Why is the railway gauge — the distance between rails — 4 feet, 8.5 inches?
One explanation is to be found here.
The development of the container in the 1950s and 1960s has had a great influence on the size and shape of containerports and containerships. You may read more about this interesting development in this book here. Although truck-trailers have increased in size (height, length), they are still hauled along lanes on highways that are not much broader than old contry roads.
So, is the story about the Horse’s South, the railway gauge and the two booster rockets of a space ship, just another myth (to be busted)? 
Many of our blogs contain some contemporary reflections, and do, as such, ask questions rather answer questions at the bottom line.
Today, our question is: What does determine the “standard” length of a journal article?
Árni
Ps. Many thanks to Prof. Marianne Jahre for telling me this story of the railway gauge during one of my visits at BI, Norway, two years ago.
Categories: Innovation · Socks and sandals
