Operations management is an area of business concerned with the production of goods and services, and involves the responsibility of ensuring that business operations are efficient in terms of using as little resource as needed, and effective in terms of meeting customer requirements. It is concerned with managing the process that converts inputs (in the forms of materials, labor and energy) into outputs (in the form of goods and services).

Operations traditionally refer to the production of goods and services separately, although the distinction between these two main types of operations is increasingly difficult to make as manufacturers tend to merge product and service offerings. More generally, Operations Management aims to increase the content of value-added activities in any given process. Fundamentally, these value-adding creative activities should be aligned with market opportunity for optimal enterprise performance.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, Operations Management is the field concerned with managing and directing the physical and/or technical functions of a firm or organization, particularly those relating to development, production, and manufacturing. Operations Management programs typically include instruction in principles of general management, manufacturing and production systems, plant management, equipment maintenance management, production control, industrial labor relations and skilled trades supervision, strategic manufacturing policy, systems analysis, productivity analysis and cost control, and materials planning.

Origins

The origins of operations management can be traced back through cultural changes of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, including the Industrial Revolution, the development of interchangeable manufacture, the Waltham-Lowell system, the manufacturing, scientific, the development of assembly line practice and mass production, and the Toyota Production System. Combined, these ideas allowed for the standardization and continuous improvement of production processes. Key features of these early production systems were the departure from skilled craftsmen to a more thorough division of labor and the transfer of knowledge from within the minds of skilled, experienced workers into the equipment, documentation, and systems.

There are scores of people who can be viewed as thought leaders whose life's work laid the foundations for operations management (only some of which have name recognition among the general population). A very cursory list would include (in approximate chronological order)Adam Smith, Jean-Baptiste Vaquette de Gribeauval, Louis de Tousard, Honoré Blanc, Eli Whitney, John H. Hall, Simeon North, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Henry Gantt, Henry Ford, Sakichi Toyoda, Alfred Sloan, Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, Tex Thornton and his Whiz Kids team, and W. Edwards Deming and the developers of the Toyota Production System (Taiichi Ohno, Shigeo Shingo, Eiji Toyoda, Kiichiro Toyoda, and others).

Whereas some influences place primary importance on the equipment and too often viewed people as recalcitrant impediments to systems (e.g., Taylor and Ford), over time the need to view production operations as sociotechnical systems, duly considering both humans and machines, was increasingly appreciated and addressed.

Operations research as a subdiscipline gained prominence during World War II, when mathematicians applied analytical tools to optimize operational questions, initially with a military context, and later also within general operations.

Historically, the body of knowledge stemming from industrial engineering formed the basis of the first MBA programs, and is central to operations management as used across diverse business sectors, industry, consulting and non-profit organizations.

Organizations

The following organizations support and promote operations management:

§  Association for Operations Management (APICS) which supports the Production and Inventory Management Journal

§  European Operations Management Association (EurOMA) which supports the International Journal of Operations & Production Management

§  Production and Operations Management Society (POMS) which supports the journal: Production and Operations Management

§  Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS)

§  Institute of Operations Management (UK)

§  Association of Technology, Management, and Applied Engineering (ATMAE)

Publications

The following academic journals are concerned with Operations Management issues:

§  Journal of Operations Management

§  International Journal of Operations & Production Management

§  Production and Operations Management

§  Production and Inventory Management Journal

§  Journal of Modelling in Operations Management

§  Society of Operations Management