1.1 Definition
Operation Management is the activity of managing the resources which produce and deliver goods and services (Slack et al, 2010). These activities commences from the very initial production stage of information gathering right up to the final stage of consumer consumption of the product. Every organization does operation management even if they do not notice it. All organizations produce goods and/or services and to create goods and/or services, the organization must perform a number of operations which must be effectively and efficiently managed.
1.2 Role of Operations Management
Operations Management is of prime importance in all sectors, cells, functions, units and groups within the organization. An organization is a system and according to the business dictionary, (http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/system.html) a system is ‘An organized, purposeful structure that consists of interrelated and interdependent elements (components, entities, factors, members, parts etc.). These elements continually influence one another (directly or indirectly) to maintain their activity and the existence of the system, in order to achieve the goal of the system’.
Read more: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/system.html#ixzz2QSyXAP1f
. All employees are part of this system and have a common interest in making the consumer to receive goods and/or services in the best way possible. So I will say every manager in every part of the organization is to some extent an operational manager.
According to James (2011), the role of operations management is to manage the transformation of an organization’s inputs into finished goods and services using processes. Processes are actually present in all areas of the organization from Human Resource to Finance to Marketing to Procurement etc.
1.3 The ‘Input – Transformation – Output’ process
Resources can either be transforming resources or transformed resources. After the