About

Charles Fine is the Chrysler Leaders for Global Operations Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management. His research focuses on supply chain strategy and value chain roadmapping, with particular emphasis on fast-clockspeed manufacturing industries. Fine’s work has supported the design and improvement of supply chain relationships across various sectors including electronics, automotive, aerospace, communications, and consumer products. He has examined outsourcing dynamics through dynamic models for assessing leverage within complex industrial value chains and has contributed principles for value chain design based on strategic and logistical assessments. Recently, his research area has expanded to operations strategy for early-stage entrepreneurial organizations and the impact of AI tools on product management. Fine has taught courses in Operations Strategy, Supply Chain Management, and Product Management at MIT Sloan and consults widely with global clients. He has also served as CEO, President, and Dean of the Asia School of Business in Kuala Lumpur from 2015 to 2022, established in collaboration with MIT Sloan. Fine is an author of notable publications including 'Clockspeed' and 'Faster, Smarter, Greener,' and holds degrees from Duke University and Stanford University.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Business
• Political Science
• Social Science
• Computer Security
• Sociology
• Marketing
• Commerce
• Economics
• Engineering
• Transport engineering
• Industrial organization
• Finance
• Economic growth
• Microeconomics

Selected publications

• Market expansion through online-buying to store-pickup (O2S): Implications for end-to-end supply chain strategy

  International Journal of Production Economics · 2024-01-11 · 2 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Market Expansion Through Online-Buying to Store-Pickup (O2s): Implications for End-to-End Supply Chain Strategy

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Implications of Online-Buying to Store-Pickup (O2S) for End-to-End Supply Chain Strategy

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2022

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Business
  • Industrial organization

  A growing body of literature examines the demand effects of the increasingly popular retailing strategies of integrating digital sales channels with brick-and-mortar stores, allowing customers to buy goods online and pick them up in a store (termed BOPS) or by the store’s curbside. Typically, however, implications of such strategies are explored for the retail channel alone while ignoring the sourcing strategy, which affects a key driver of their influence: product availability. We study such online-to-store (O2S) strategies using an analytical model of the end-to-end supply chain for two cases: a brick-and-mortar retailer expanding its market via O2S, and a retailer integrating its independent brick-and-mortar and online channels via O2S. We derive rational expectations equilibrium product availability, involving sourcing strategy and consumer choice, in pre and post-O2S cases to provide three insights about the interdependence of O2S and sourcing strategies. First, market expansion via O2S is moderated by the retailer’s sourcing strategy: it is achieved only if the equilibrium pre-O2S product availability is below a certain threshold. Second, introduction of an O2S strategy can affect the feasibility of retailer’s suppliers: it can render an existing supplier economically infeasible and make a previously-infeasible supplier feasible. Third, cost-efficient processing of goods returned by the retailer’s O2S and online consumers is necessary not just for retail profitability but also to ensure supplier feasibility. For practice, this highlights the need to plan the retail and sourcing strategies in a multi-channel environment jointly as interdependent components of an end-to-end supply chain. Managers are thus forewarned of pitfalls from separating the decision-making in retailing and sourcing strategies.

  PublisherDOI

• Operations for entrepreneurs: Can Operations Management make a difference in entrepreneurial theory and practice?

  Production and Operations Management · 2022 · 7 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Computer Science
  • Political Science

  Although entrepreneurship‐related papers have had some representation in Production and Operations Management (POM) over the past 30 years, the topic still seems a bit like a poor stepchild in the research of operations management (OM) scholars. Yet, entrepreneurship is important to the economy, and many schools are growing significantly their entrepreneurship programs and offerings but often without reference to or inclusion of operations courses. This paper is motivated by the question of the operations needs of new ventures and how they might differ from the needs of large, established firms. Toward that end, we review briefly the state of entrepreneurship scholarship in POM (and beyond), present our own (field‐based) research (and cases), and propose a framework for what we call “operations for entrepreneurs,” that we hope can be a basis for further productive research and curriculum development by the OM community.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Automobiles

  Princeton University Press eBooks · 2021-07-13 · 2 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Implications of Buy-Online-and-Pick-up-in-Store (BOPS) for End-to-end Supply Chain Strategy

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2021-01-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Tata Center for Technology and Design at MIT

  2020-09-04

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  His research focuses on the marriage of mechanical design theory and usercentered product design to create simple, elegant technological solutions for use in highly constrained environments.His work includes design for emerging markets and developing countries, biomimetic design, fluid/solid/granular mechanics, biomechanics, and the design of ocean systems.Prof. Winter is the principal inventor of the Leveraged Freedom Chair (LFC), an all-terrain wheelchair designed for developing countries that was a winner of a 2010 R&D 100 award and was named one of the Wall Street Journal's top innovations in 2011.His Ph.D. work focused on adapting the burrowing mechanisms of razor clams to create compact, low power, and reversible burrowing systems for subsea applications such as anchoring, oil recovery, and cable installation.Prof.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Unintended Consequences of Automated Vehicles and Pooling for Urban Transportation Systems

  Production and Operations Management · 2020 · 42 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Computer Security
  • Business

  Automated vehicles (AVs) have emerged rapidly in recent years, becoming a focus of high expectations and heated debates. Advocates argue that the arrival of AVs will make driving safer, greener, cheaper, and faster, bringing ubiquitous access to transportation while significantly reducing traffic congestion and environmental impacts. Skeptics, in contrast, suggest that the appeal of AVs will induce additional driving, offsetting or even overwhelming the positive effects of increased automation. Many analysts now believe that the solution lies in ensuring that most vehicle trips are shared to serve the same number of passenger miles with fewer vehicle miles, reducing traffic congestion. However, these analyses fail to recognize that reducing congestion will induce yet more demand for driving and attract riders from other transportation modes including public transit, which is already experiencing falling ridership in many cities. In this study, we explore the impact of AVs and pooling on consumer mode choice and the effect on the performance of both road and public transit systems. We show that the well‐intentioned move to promote pooling may have the unintended consequence of triggering a public transit death spiral, leading to both worse public transit quality and more rather than less traffic congestion. We argue that the deployment of AVs and pooling can be effective at accelerating the transition to sustainable urban mobility, but only when accompanied by policies that make driving less attractive, not more.

  PublisherDOI

• Faster, Smarter, Greener

  The MIT Press eBooks · 2017-09-22 · 21 citations

  book

  A call to redefine mobility so that it is connected, heterogeneous, intelligent, and personalized, as well as sustainable, adaptable, and city-friendly. The twentieth century was the century of the automobile; the twenty-first will see mobility dramatically re-envisioned. Automobiles altered cityscapes, boosted economies, and made personal mobility efficient and convenient for many. We had a century-long love affair with the car. But today, people are more attached to their smartphones than their cars. Cars are not always the quickest mode of travel in cities; and emissions from the rapidly growing number of cars threaten the planet. This book, by three experts from industry and academia, envisions a new world of mobility that is connected, heterogeneous, intelligent, and personalized (the CHIP architecture). The authors describe the changes that are coming. City administrators are shifting from designing cities for cars to designing cities for people. Nations and cities will increasingly employ targeted user fees and offer subsidies to nudge consumers toward more sustainable modes. The sharing economy is coaxing many consumers to shift from being owners of assets to being users of services. The auto industry is responding with connected cars that double as virtual travel assistants and by introducing autonomous driving. The CHIP architecture embodies an integrated, multimode mobility system that builds on ubiquitous connectivity, electrified and autonomous vehicles, and a marketplace open to innovation and entrepreneurship. Consumers will exercise choice on the basis of user experience and efficiency, aided by “intelligent advisors,” accessible through their mobile devices. An innovative mobility architecture reconfigured for this century is a social and economic necessity; this book charts a course for achieving it.

  PublisherDOI

• Faster, Smarter, Greener: The Future of the Car and Urban Mobility

  RePEc: Research Papers in Economics · 2017-09-22 · 7 citations

  book

  The twentieth century was the century of the automobile; the twenty-first will see mobility dramatically re-envisioned. Automobiles altered cityscapes, boosted economies, and made personal mobility efficient and convenient for many. We had a century-long love affair with the car. But today, people are more attached to their smartphones than their cars. Cars are not always the quickest mode of travel in cities; and emissions from the rapidly growing number of cars threaten the planet. This book, by three experts from industry and academia, envisions a new world of mobility that is connected, heterogeneous, intelligent, and personalized (the CHIP architecture). The authors describe the changes that are coming. City administrators are shifting from designing cities for cars to designing cities for people. Nations and cities will increasingly employ targeted user fees and offer subsidies to nudge consumers toward more sustainable modes. The sharing economy is coaxing many consumers to shift from being owners of assets to being users of services. The auto industry is responding with connected cars that double as virtual travel assistants and by introducing autonomous driving. The CHIP architecture embodies an integrated, multimode mobility system that builds on ubiquitous connectivity, electrified and autonomous vehicles, and a marketplace open to innovation and entrepreneurship. Consumers will exercise choice on the basis of user experience and efficiency, aided by “intelligent advisors, ” accessible through their mobile devices. An innovative mobility architecture reconfigured for this century is a social and economic necessity; this book charts a course for achieving it.

Frequent coauthors

• Shardul S. Phadnis

  Asia School of Business

  7 shared

• Michael A. Cusumano

  5 shared

• Edward G. Anderson

  5 shared

• Gary Burchill

  5 shared

• Geoffrey Parker

  Dartmouth College

  4 shared

• Jarrod Goentzel

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  4 shared

• Sergey Naumov

  Research Institute of Pharmacology and Regenerative Medicine named ED Goldberg

  3 shared

• Edward Keith G. Capoy

  3 shared

Labs

• System DynamicsPI

Awards & honors

• Greenfuel Technologies Corporation board of directors
• Driving Strategic Innovation executive education program co-…