Operations management

Abstract

This book provides a clear, authoritative, well structured and interesting treatment of operations management as it applies to a variety of businesses and organizations. The text provides both a logical path through the activities of operations management and an understanding of their strategic context. More specifically, this text is: Strategic in its perspective. It is unambiguous in treating the operations function as being central to competitiveness. ● Conceptual in the way it explains the reasons why operations managers need to take decisions. ● Comprehensive in its coverage of the significant ideas and issues which are relevant to most types of operation. ● Practical in that the issues and challenges of making operations management decisions in practice are discussed. The ‘Operations in practice’ feature, which starts every chapter, the short cases that appear through the chapters, and the case studies at the end of each chapter, all explore the approaches taken by operations managers in practice. ● International in the examples which are used. There are over 120 descriptions of operations practice from all over the world. ● Balanced in its treatment. This means we reflect the balance of economic activity between service and manufacturing operations. Around seventy-five per cent of examples are from service organizations and twenty-five percent from manufacturing.