Chapter 6: Framing case studies
Chapter 2 covered a number of topics, from planning inventories to running a presidential election, with topics like public health, managing the power grid and running a furniture store in between. For each of these application domains the chapter provided candidate lists of performance metrics, types of decisions, and sources of uncertainty.
Chapters 3, 4, and 5 then discussed these three dimensions in much greater depth, using the applications from chapter 2 to illustrate the discussion.
Now that we have all this background under our belt, this chapter provides a series of case studies, each generated by ChatGPT using the lists of metrics, decisions, and uncertainties as a prompt to guide the case. However, the cases describe the problems without serving them on a silver platter — the reader has to pull the metrics, decisions and uncertainties from the discussion.
Each case is followed by two sets of questions. The first is a list of questions created by ChatGPT, called “Discussion Questions,” that help explore the reader’s absorption of the details of the case. The second is a list called “Decision Framing Questions” which are the same for each case. The decision framing questions are listed below, followed by the list of cases with links to the cases themselves which can be downloaded.
The decision framing questions
We use the following questions at the end of each case to help synthesize the case in terms of the metrics involved in evaluating performance, the types of decisions that can be made, and the uncertainties that affect performance:
-
Identify the different metrics that can be used to evaluate every aspect of the performance of the system. Organize these into a pyramid to indicate the relative importance, following the style given here.
-
What are the types of decisions? Use the list of decision types here as a guide, illustrated by the applications here.
-
Fill out the performance metrics along the top (from most to least important) followed by the list of decisions (in any order). Use your judgment to assess whether the impact of each decision on each metric is H (high impact), M (medium), L (low) or N (none). Finally, use the resulting matrix to rank the decisions in terms of their impact on the most important metrics. You can do this with the interactive decision framing tool (build a pyramid, list decisions, and fill in the matrix online), or with the downloadable spreadsheet template if you’d rather not create an account.
-
What are the different sources of uncertainty? Use the 12 categories of uncertainty here as a guide.
- Repeat the exercise in (3), but this time using uncertainties instead of decisions.
- a) Which sources of uncertainty would be captured using average performance over time?
- b) Which sources of uncertainty represent forms of risk that are not properly captured using averages?
- Choose the single decision that seems to have the highest impact on the most important metric.
- a) What approach do you think you would use to make this decision?
- b) What data appears to be necessary to make this decision, including the calculation of any performance metrics where the decision would have a high or medium impact?
- Using the same decision you identified in (6), identify the people, departments, groups or organizations that you would need to work with to implement the decision.
The cases
The cases are organized by the nine problem areas from Chapter 2, including health which is further divided into three subareas. In addition, we have added a 10th area on startups. The name of each case carries a link to the document that can be downloaded.
Inventory planning
Aurora Motors — The Flow Coordination Dilemma. An automaker must synchronize uncertain global parts supply, production, and customer deliveries when tariffs, federal incentives, gasoline prices, and buyer preferences change faster than its plants can respond.
Northstar Living — The Inventory Bet. A home-goods retailer must commit to holiday-season purchases of its fastest-growing products before it knows how strong demand will be or whether ocean shipments will arrive on time.
Demand management — Selling furniture
Hearthline Home — The Demand Balancing Problem. A regional furniture retailer must decide how aggressively to stimulate holiday-season demand without creating stockouts in popular styles or deep markdowns on products customers no longer want.
Electric power grid management
Blue River System Operator — The 6:00 p.m. Reliability Decision. A regional grid operator faces a record evening peak, thunderstorms moving toward the solar corridor, and a warning from a critical generator, and must choose how to cover the reliability gap in real time.
Ridgeway Industrial Systems — The Energy Crossroads. A manufacturing network COO must respond to a utility’s request to study its service connection as rising electricity costs and data-center-driven infrastructure investment reshape the region’s power system.
Hotel revenue management
Harborview Hotel — The Eight-Week Pricing Decision. A hotel general manager must set pricing and inventory strategy for a citywide technology conference when peak nights are nearly booked but surrounding weekends remain soft.
Health applications
Managing Type 2 diabetes
Lakeside Medical Group — The Next Ninety Days. A primary-care team must redesign treatment for a Type 2 diabetes patient when clinical response, daily behavior, technology, and affordability are difficult to disentangle.
Public health
Bellwether Department of Health — The 36,000-Kit Decision. A state public-health office receives fewer naloxone kits than its partners requested and must allocate the limited overdose-reversal supply, decide whom to train, and whether to reserve kits for future waves.
Harbor County — Measles Response. A county health officer must decide how aggressively to respond when measles risk is concentrated, vaccination confidence is falling, and the costs of prevention are immediate — but the benefits are largely invisible.
Riverton County — Public Health Response. A county health commissioner must decide how to respond when local overdose deaths remain high even as the national crisis appears to be easing.
Redwood Department of Recovery Services — Redwood’s Funding Needle. A state addiction agency commissioner must balance naloxone distribution, treatment, and recovery services against an $18.6 million funding gap that threatens 126 positions and a heavily restricted revenue mix.
Clinical trials
Asterion Therapeutics — The Enrollment Clock. A biotech’s chief development officer must decide whether to accelerate, restructure, or pause a Phase II trial of a promising therapy as enrollment lags, safety signals emerge, and the patent clock ticks.
Crestline Biotherapies — The Week 28 Decision. A biotech must decide whether to expand, redesign, pause, or terminate a Phase II clinical trial when time, patients, capital, and remaining patent life are all limited.
Running a presidential election
The Meridian Campaign — The Ninety-Three-Vote Map. A presidential campaign manager must allocate money, candidate time, information, and field capacity across a changing electoral landscape with eleven weeks to Election Day.
Truckload fleet management
Dispatch Dynamics — The Recommendation Gap. A decision-automation company finds that only 43% of its truckload dispatch recommendations are acted on across twelve customer implementations, and must decide how to close the last-mile-of-implementation gap.
PrairieLine Freight — The Friday Afternoon Dispatch. A truckload fleet VP must balance freight selection, driver assignment, home time, and network balance when 1,184 tractors are in the wrong places heading into the weekend.
Mutual fund cash management
Summit Ridge Asset Management — The Monday Morning Cash Decision. A mutual fund CIO must decide how to manage investor flows, liquidity, portfolio performance, and trading pressure after a weekend of bad news.
Supply chain finance
Northbridge Industrial Systems — The Ninety-Day Payment Decision. A manufacturer with enough cash for its own near-term obligations but not enough to absorb tariff-driven inventory purchases must decide how to protect liquidity without destabilizing critical suppliers.
Startups
BrightNest Home Services — The Two-Sided Launch Dilemma. A home-cleaning startup with strong household demand but thin cleaner supply must decide how to balance geographic expansion, pricing, and platform investment across three pilot markets.