Operations Management for MBAs, 5th Edition

CHAPTER 1

Operations Strategy and Global Competitiveness

CHAPTER IN PERSPECTIVE

The diagram above illustrates the crucial role that operations plays in the global competitiveness of all organizations. It achieves this through the execution of an operations strategy (discussed here in Chapter 1) devoted to designing, improving, and then executing the production process by which the organization's services and products are created. We discuss the design and control of the process in terms of its planning and design (Chapter 2) and the design of its control (e.g., quality) procedures (Chapter 3). For a firm to stay competitive in the global marketplace, the process must be continually improved by reducing the inherent variability of its processes (Chapter 4) and eliminating any and all forms of waste (Chapter 5), which is typically achieved through improvement projects (Chapter 6). Finally, we must execute the process, primarily by managing the supply chain that provides the inputs and outputs for the organization (Chapter 7) and the internal details of the process dealing mainly with capacity and scheduling.

Chapter 1, Operations Strategy and Global Competitiveness, describes the global competitive environment, what customers value (the benefits received at minimal cost), the evolution ...