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Operations management is important. It is concerned
with creating the products and services upon which
we all depend. And creating products and services is
the very reason for any organization’s existence, whether that organization be large or small, manufacturing or service, for profit or not profit. Thankfully, most
companies have now come to understand the importance of operations. This is because they have realized
that effective operations management gives the
potential to improve revenues and, at the same time,
enables goods and services to be produced more
efficiently. It is this combination of higher revenues
and lower costs which is understandably important to
any organization.
Operations management is also exciting. It is at the
center of so many of the changes affecting the business world – changes in customer preference, changes
in supply networks brought about by internet-based
technologies, changes in what we want to do at work,
how we want to work, and so on. There has rarely
been a time when operations management was more
topical or more at the heart of business and cultural
shifts.
Operations management is also challenging. Promoting the creativity which will allow organizations to
respond to so many changes is becoming the prime
task of operations managers. It is they who must find
the solutions to technological and environmental
challenges, the pressures to be socially responsible,
the increasing globalization of markets and the difficult-to-define areas of knowledge management.