Operations Systems Excellence

The sole task of organisations is to either deliver customers the services that they require, or design, manufacture, and deliver products that customers are after. How do firms and organisations manage the very tasks that they carry out? How can operations themselves give excellence to organisations to enable them to be competitive? Operations management is concerned with the design, planning and control of operating systems for the provision of goods and services. This course will provide an introduction not only into the development of operational systems but more importantly into the how operating methods can help achieve corporate excellence.

• Week 1: What is operations excellence?
• This week we will explore and define the meaning of operations management using case studies and introduce some simple tools to help us identify the fundamental types of operations. 
• Week 2: Operations strategy for excellence
• Week 3: Process design for excellence
• This topic examines the focus of operations on the need to think in terms of processes. We examine the Hayes and Wheelwright typology of process types, which enables us to think clearly about what differentiates different approaches to processes and their design. We explore research and ideas underpinning process design to gain a grounded sense of operations management and what this means in practice.