We are all familiar with the science of operations management in some way, since we all have scarce resources and have to allocate those resources properly. Think about the process of preparing a meal: you have to gather all the proper ingredients and prepare them for cooking. Certain ingredients go in at certain times. Occasionally, you fall behind or get too far ahead, jeopardising the entire meal. And, of course, if you find that you do not have enough ingredients, even more problems arise. All of these elements of meal preparation – purchasing ingredients, prepping the ingredients by dicing them up, mixing ingredients together, boiling or baking the dish, serving, and cleaning – can be seen as parts of operations management.

In the realm of business, operations management is more complicated than preparing a family meal. There may be hundreds or thousands of participants rather than just you and your brother or wife or grandfather cooking in the kitchen. Each participant has a specific role in the operations process; if any step of the process is disrupted, the whole process can stall or fall apart. Smart operations managers will have contingency plans in the event that stoppages occur. In this course, you will learn the fundamentals of operations management as they apply to both production and service-based operations. Successful completion of this course will empower you to implement the concepts you have learned in your place of business. Even if you do not plan to work in operations, every department of every company has processes that must be completed; someone savvy with operations management will be able to improve just about any process.