Designing, Managing, and Improving Operations

A casebook appropriate for advanced courses in Operations Management.

Unique in perspective, this collection of action and implementation-oriented cases focuses on improving the operations of a business unit ― i.e., the individual operating unit in both manufacturing and services ― and is based on the common conceptual premise that striving to create a “world-class” operation is not enough to guarantee long-term success. Throughout, the cases stress that the key to success lies in designing operations to provide a foundation for subsequent improvement, managing them in a way that directs, fuels, and sustains that improvement path, and improving the operating unit with an explicit and effective strategy.