What is Operations Management?

Operations Management deals with the design and management of products, processes, services and supply chains. It considers the acquisition, development, and utilization of resources that firms need to deliver the goods and services their clients want. The purvey of OM ranges from strategic to tactical and operational levels. Representative strategic issues include determining the size and location of manufacturing plants, deciding the structure of service or telecommunications networks, and designing technology supply chains. Tactical issues include plant layout and structure, project management methods, and equipment selection and replacement. Operational issues include production scheduling and control, inventory management, quality control and inspection, traffic and materials handling, and equipment maintenance policies.

Operations Management
Assembled by Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD Operations management focuses on carefully managing the processes to produce and distribute products and services. Major, overall activities often include product creation, development, production and distribution. (These activities are also associated with Product and Service Management.) Related activities include managing purchases, inventory control, quality control, storage, logistics and evaluations of processes. A great deal of focus is on efficiency and effectiveness of processes. Therefore, operations management often includes substantial measurement and analysis of internal processes. Ultimately, the nature of how operations management is carried out in an organization depends very much on the nature of the products or services in the organization, for example, on retail, manufacturing or wholesale.

Understanding operations management Introduction

This Unit is designed to provide you with a basic framework for understanding operations management and its organisational and managerial context. It begins with a brief history of the changing nature of operations in a manufacturing context, but emphasises that the operations function is significant in all types of organisation, whether they produce goods or provide services, and whether they are in the private, public or voluntary sectors. This Unit presents a process model of operations that describes inputs being transformed into outputs within the boundary of an operations system. It also discusses the role of operations managers, in particular the importance of focusing on suppliers and customers who are outside this boundary, as well as on other aspects of the operations system's external environment. This material is from our archive and is an adapted extract from Managing performance and change (B700) which is no longer taught by The Open University. If you want to study formally with us, you may wish to explore other courses we offer in this subject area

Understanding operations management

Learning outcomes
After studying this Unit you should be able to:

define operations and operations management identify the roles and responsibilities of operations managers in different organisational contexts identify the operations management aspects of your own work apply the transformation model to identify the inputs, transformation processes and outputs of an organisation identify the operational and administrative processes in your own organisation describe the boundaries of an operations system, and recognise its interfaces with other functional areas within the organisation and with its external environment.