Hi,

There are several types of operational cases that you may have:

1) Operational math problems. (e.g. Should we increase the speed of the elevator or just buy a second one? How should we reduce the queues? How should we increase the output of a factory?).

Structuring:

• Usually, you have to look at the process (value chain). Even the most complicated systems have the inflows and outflows

The key concepts that you have to learn:

• Capacity and utilization (both machine and people)
• Cycle time, Throughput time, Little's Law
• How the does lowest cycle time influence the production? (Lead time = cycle time of the slowest process)
• How can we mitigate the bottlenecks with low cycle time? (Buffer, Parallel process, speeding up)

2) Cost cutting cases

Structuring:

• What is the cost composition and what are the biggest costs
• Benchmarking of the biggest costs to find the improvement potential
• Process improvements to meet the benchmarks
• Costs and benefits of the proposed initiatives

The key concepts that you have to learn:

• Internal / external benchmarking
• Idle time
• Core processes (usually are optimized) and the supporting processes (usually are cut)
• Math structures (Frequency of operations * time per operation)
• Other useful structures (e.g. people - process - technology)

Feel free to reach me for further help with these cases.

As for non-profit cases - these types of cases are actually pretty traditional, especially for McKinsey. The reason why people think that they are rare is that the casebooks (that are in general not a good source of cases) do not have enough of them.

To provide a bit of structure, there are several types of non-profit cases:

1. Factors influencing the price (What are the factors influencing the price of oil? Factors influencing the price of real estate?)
2. Macroeconomic cases (How will you improve life expectancy in a particular city? How will you decrease the unemployment?)
3. Public sector non-profits (Increasing the revenues of a museum; increasing the revenues from tourism in a city)
4. Redesigning the processes (How will you develop a new anti-monopoly regulation?)
5. Non-profit investments (A billionaire is building a new school. What are the factors to look at?)

As you can see there are many types of cases and many frameworks that can be used. I usually give a big homework (10 cases) and then cover them within one session. I also have several sessions on ops cases. Feel free to reach me if you need help.

Best!