What is Operations Management..?

WHAT IS OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT?

Every business is managed through three major functions: finance, marketing, and operations management. Finance is the function responsible for managing cash flow, current assets, and capital investments. Marketing is responsible for sales, generating customer demand, and understanding customer wants and needs. Most of us have some idea of what finance and marketing are about, but what does operations management do?

Operations management (OM) is the business function that plans, organizes, coordinates, and controls the resources needed to produce a company’s goods and services. Operations management is a management function. It involves managing people, equipment, technology, information, and many other resources.

Operations management is the central core function of every company. This is true whether the company is large or small, provides a physical good or a service, and is for profit or not for profit. Every company has an operations management function. Actually, all the other organizational functions are there primarily to support the operations function. Without operations, there would be no goods or services to sell. Consider a retailer such as Gap that sells casual apparel. The marketing function provides promotions for the merchandise, and the finance function provides the needed capital. It is the operations function, however, that plans and coordinates all the resources needed to design, produce, and deliver the merchandise to the various retail locations. Without operations, there would be no goods or services to sell to customers.

The role of operations management is to transform a company’s inputs into the finished goods or services. Inputs include human resources (such as workers and managers), facilities and processes (such as buildings and equipment), as well as materials, technology, and information. Outputs are the goods and services a company produces.