Tag: Orlando Magic

Video Tip: Starting Your Fall Semester With Videos

magicStarting about 20 years ago, with our 6th edition, Jay and I began developing a series of company video and cases. They have ranged  from manufacturers of potato chips, boats, and ambulances, to service firms like a hospital, an NBA team, Red Lobster, and Hard Rock.  The videos are brief (5 – 12 minutes) and tie directly to the content of a specific text chapter.  There may be as many as seven videos on one company (such as Arnold Palmer Hospital or Hard Rock Café) and students seem to like following one or two organizations throughout the text/semester.  We are very pleased, that over the years, our 35 videos have won many awards, including 2 Silver Addy’s for the best short video, selected from 10,000’s of entries each year. We are even up for an Emmy award for one of our Orlando Magic videos!

hard rockI have always started the first week of the semester with one or both of the following:  Hard Rock Café: OM in Services (8 minutes) and Frito-Lay:  OM in Manufacturing (7 minutes).  The first shows how a service firm that is known throughout the world approaches some of the 10 OM decisions around which we structure the text.  This firm is especially interesting because it is a lot more than a restaurant. We show that Hard Rock makes almost the same revenue from its small retail shops as it does from the food side of the house.

The second video provides a perfect contrast to Hard Rock and makes for a great class discussion on how manufacturers differ from service firms.  Frito-Lay is also a product everyone knows.  But this company does not let outsiders in to tour, and has proprietary processes that even we were not allowed to film.  This video reviews how Frito-Lay deals with all 10 of the decisions that OM managers have to make.

I hope our video series helps get your Fall, 2015 semester off to a successful start. And there is more to come, as we introduce five new videos featuring OM at Alaska Airlines in January, 2016!

Video Tip: Sustainability and the Sports Arena

The Eagles' home stadium has 14 wind turbines and 11,000 solar panels
The Eagles’ home stadium has 14 wind turbines and 11,000 solar panels

When you are teaching Supplement 5, Sustainability in the Supply Chain, you may want to show our latest video on sustainability at the Orlando Magic’s Amway Center. This arena became the 1st gold-certified LEED basketball facility in the U.S.

Now The Wall Street Journal (May 19, 2014) reports that NFL teams are starting to see “green” as well.  The San Francisco 49er’s new $1.2 billion stadium will be the first in the league to feature a “living roof,” a canopy of green and flowering plants nestled across the top of an 8-story tower of luxury suites; this will reduce the building’s energy use and offer other environmental benefits by providing natural insulation. NFL clubs are also developing green programs to reduce energy emissions. They are using solar panels, wind turbines, electric charging stations and other low-carbon alternatives. The NFL is part of a general effort among U.S. sports leagues to embrace cleaner energy, led by a group launched in 2011 calling itself the Green Sports Alliance.

Alliance officials say sports teams that go green help boost public awareness of environmental goals while also benefiting their operations by lowering their energy costs. The $1.2 billion Atlanta Falcons Stadium, set to open in 2017, will include a rainwater-collection system to use for irrigation and cooling. The Philadelphia Eagles’ Lincoln Financial Field has installed features including energy-saving timers and sensors for lighting and cooling equipment. These and other energy-saving features have cut the team’s power consumption by half. The Houston Texans have created an interactive media guide, saving 2.6 million pages used in printing; the Redskins have installed solar panels at FedEx Field; the Rams have printed game tickets on recycled paper; the Vikings have put in reduced-flow plumbing at the players’ clubhouse and training areas; and the 49er’s stadium is net energy neutral, which means it is expected to generate all the energy it needs for the team’s 10 home games.

Video Tip: Operations Management at the Orlando Magic

magic Jay and I think you and your students will love our five new videos and cases that feature the Orlando Magic and its new home, the Amway Center.  From our 2 months of interviewing and filming team executives, we are convinced that from an operations perspective, it is one of the most professionally run sports franchises in the country.

It wasn’t easy to get an inside view of an NBA team–requiring the sign off of Orlando’s mayor, the team’s owner, team execs, as well as the NBA’s David Sterns. In selecting the Magic to feature in this new edition, though, we expose your students to an exciting area of service OM. Our previous editions featured videos on Frito-Lay, Darden Restaurants, Arnold Palmer Hospital, Hard Rock Café, Regal Marine and ambulance maker Wheeled Coach. We have invested over $300,000 to script and film the 35 videos that accompany our OM texts–all free to adopters and embedded in MyOMLab.

Here are the new videos:

Chapter 4, forecasting, features the Magic’s use of multiple regression to forecast sales.

Supp.5, our new chapter on sustainability, highlights the US’s 1st LEED gold-certified sports arena.

Chapter 13 illustrates how the Magic use revenue management to maximize ticket revenue.

Chapter 14, MRP,  features Chef John’s use of bills-of-materials to feed 18,500 fans at a game.

And my favorite, titled “From the Eagles to the Magic: Converting the Amway Center”, illustrates the critical issue of scheduling (Chapter 15). The video includes a time-lapsed shot of the overnight conversion from rock concert to basketball game.

We hope you enjoy this newest set of videos and note that MyOMLab now includes 4 assignable multiple choice questions on each of the 35 videos.

OM in the News: From Lady Gaga to the Orlando Magic

What do Lady Gaga and the Orlando Magic have in common? As the Orlando Sentinel (April 15,2011) reports, Lady Gaga (if you don’t know who she is, don’t worry–your students do) performed her Monster Ball Tour on April 15th in the sparkling new Amway Center in downtown Orlando before 17,000 screaming fans. It took 42 trucks and busses to carry her massive concert set to town. The unloading and set building process began the night before and was only possible because the Amway Center has state-of-the-art technology and space for the show. The old Amway Arena had only half the number of loading bays, no freight elevators, and less sophisticated sound and lighting–hence missed out as a destination for major tours.

How is this an operations management issue? It’s because today (April 16th), the Orlando Magic open their first NBA Playoff game of the season against the Atlanta Hawks in the very same space. With ESPN providing national TV coverage in 3-D, Lady Gaga’s crew had just 3 hours to clear out-of-town (from 11:30pm yesterday till 2:30am today) to make room for the ESPN crew to set up, and to allow for the concert floor and seats to be converted to a basketball arena.

Precise scheduling,  excellent processes, and good communications make these change-overs possible. Whether its Lady Gaga to Magic, or NY Knicks to Ice Follies, OM is the key to success.

Discussion questions:

1. Name some other activities that require such perfect scheduling.

2.  Why are ultra-modern arenas so important to cities like Orlando?