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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.
