Operations Management For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Introduction

We like to think of operations management as the neurological system of a healthy business. It coordinates the behavior and system functionality of living, breathing organizations to ensure that they continue to grow and thrive in the real world. The more complex the organization, the more vital it is for its operations management to be strong and in good working order.

Successful operations management leaders tend to be the well-organized and systematic types of the world. They fuss and arrange and then ponder and tweak. They see the wrinkles and iron them out to ensure that their companies make the most of what they’ve got. And many people think operations managers thrive on bringing order to chaos, but this shouldn’t be the case! In this book we show you how to plan operations and implement those plans so that your company’s operations run smoothly — chaos-free.

Maintaining order and efficiency is a fact of life — in business, families, personal relationships, and other human systems. And operations management is essentially the science of managing resources and behavior. But unfortunately, this important field of study is often explained in a way that makes it sound like an exercise in advanced math instead of a vital part of corporate governance and strategy development.

We wrote this book to help you get a handle on the fundamentals of operations management and to make your life more comfortable when dealing with operations. Whether you’ll actually be managing ...