ROBERT H. HAYES is the Philip Caldwell Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus, at the Harvard Business School. He has published widely; three of his articles won McKinsey Awards for the best articles published in the Harvard Business Review during those years. His latest book, Strategic Operations: Competing Through Capabilities (coauthored with Gary Pisano and David Upton ), was published in 1996.GARY P. PISANO is the Harry E. Figgie, Jr. Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. Since joining the Harvard faculty in 1988, he has taught both MBA and executive level courses on technology and operations management, operations strategy, competitive strategy,… product development, the management of innovation, and health care. Pisano is a widely published author with over 25 research papers published in such journals as Management Science, Administrative Science Quarterly, and the Harvard Business Review. He has also written case studies on such companies as BMW, ITT-Automotive, Intel, and Eli Lilly.DAVID M. UPTON has been on the faculty of the Harvard Business School since 1989. He is currently course head for the required first-year MBA course in Technology and Operations Management and has taught second-year elective courses in Operations Strategy and Operations Improvement and Information Technology.STEVEN C. WHEELWRIGHT is the Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration, Retired, at Harvard Business School. Along with Harvard colleagues Bob Hayes and Kim Clark, Professor Wheelwright has also published the highly regarded book, Dynamic Manufacturing: Creating the Learning Organization (Free Press, 1988).