We want to welcome you to both an exciting and tactical discipline: operations management.
This manual on Fundamentals of operations management is an effective tool to understand one of the main functions of any organisation: the creation of goods and services. That is, to understand what resources are needed to generate the goods and services of an organisation in a global and highly competitive environment, while also incorporating new technologies.
In this manual, along with the classic fundamentals of operations management, we will look forward towards what is coming and how it will impact process improvement in companies.
The main goal of this book is to equip the reader with the fundamental concepts in operations management. To do this, it will present the main qualitative and quantitative models for managing operations both in public and private companies.
As the reader will see, the chapters are structured with an easy-to-follow and rigorous thematic thread that will make each and every step understandable. All this book has been designed with a distance learning student or a self-taught reader, such as an entrepreneur, in mind.
We aim to facilitate the learning of a discipline that for years has been considered complicated and specifically focused on certain professions, and to highlight its relevance and future opportunities. We strive for the reader to enjoy learning from this manual and to discover an exciting discipline with many career opportunities.
The book combines both theory and practical exercises with real life cases whose examples will allow the learner to understand the day-to-day and the myriad of challenges and opportunities faced by operations management.
The manual covers classic management topics such as process design, inventories, demand forecasting, etc., as well as newer concepts such as digitisation of the supply chain.
As for the way the content is conveyed, we have opted for a simple language that facilitates understanding, while also being rigorous and precise.
The methodology used is distance learning, which means that this manual is mainly intended for self-learning, and consequently, its structure is designed to promote the understanding of its contents.
