Operations management is an area of management concerned with overseeing, designing, and controlling the process of production and redesigning business operations in the production of goods and/or services. It involves the responsibility of ensuring that business operations are efficient in terms of using as few resources as needed, and effective in terms of meeting customer requirements. It is concerned with managing the process that converts inputs (in the forms of materials, labor, and energy) into outputs (in the form of goods and/or services).
What is an assembly line?
An assembly line is a manufacturing process (most of the time called a progressive assembly) in which parts (usually interchangeable parts) are added to a product in a sequential manner to create a finished product much faster than with handcrafting-type methods. The assembly line was first mechanized in the U.S. by Eli Whitney, in 1797, who also patented a type of cotton gin. Whitney began using the assembly line to manufacture muskets that had interchangeable parts. He was then contracted to supply 10,000 muskets for the U.S. government in two years.
Prior to Whitney's mechanization of the assembly line, craftsmen made muskets one at a time. Due to the handmade & custom nature of this process, each musket was unique. If a single part of the musket broke, it could not be easily replaced, but instead required a custom repair. Because parts manufactured by Whitney's assembly line parts were interchangeable, common parts could be used to replace broken ones. This was a vast improvement in both manufacturing and maintenance of produced goods. In the early 1900s, Ford Motor Company adopted the assembly line to mass produce the Model T.
What is Economic order Quantity? (EOQ)
Economic order quantity is the order quantity that minimizes total inventory holding costs and ordering costs. It is one of the oldest classical production scheduling models. The framework