Completed notes of the course Part 1

Page 1

1 What is operations management? Operations management explores the way organizations produce and distribute good and services, it organizes its production and distribution. Good such as automobiles, airplanes, computers and houses, must be produced, as do the services provided by hospitals, ski resort, trucks and airlines. It is related to all the processes, engineering, production, distribution of goods and services, it is how to manage operations, how to design, run and optimize the operations. It’s the job of an operations manager to make sure these activities occur when and how they are planned. Operations management is the systematic development and control of the processes that transforms inputs into goods and services. The operations function comprises a significant percentage of the employees and physical assets in most organizations. Operations managers are concerned operating system, such as equipment, labor, facilities, materials, energy and information to produce the output; they are also responsible for critical activities such as materials management, capacity, planning, purchasing, scheduling and quality. Why is it important? The importance of O.M. has increased dramatically in recent years due to competition, globalization, shorter product, and service life cycle, because of better educated and quality-conscious consumers and the capability of new technology that have given pressures on the operations function to improve productivity while providing a broader array of high-quality products and services. Ex.: Toyota. They have been working on quality, reducing cost and increase the product. Italy -> second largest manufacturing country in Europe is based on a strong operations management (Italian GDP is 50% coming from manufacturing). Operations and…