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Operations Management : Course Work 1

Summary Introduction

I. History of Operations Management (p.3)
II. New goals & implications for Operations Management (p.5)

Sources
Introduction
If you ask some people in the street to define Operations Management, they certainly respond that they do not know. But, without knowing it, they are vicariously concerned by this concept. Indeed, when they buy things like TV, they are going to use products which result from a value generating transformation of inputs into outputs. This process is called Operations Management. Companies have used that function for many decades. But, Operations Management and its objectives have evolved much since its “creation” in 1776 by Adam Smith.
So, what are the main developments of Operation Management during these past years? And what are the new goals of Operations Management?
Firstly, we are going to deal with Operations Management history and compare current OM to old OM. Then, we will explicate the new aims and implications that Operations Management is going to be confronted in the next years.

I. History of Operations Management
Adam Smith was the first to initiate the concept of Operations Management in 1776. Even if he did not use this term, his labour specialization is really a kind of Operations Management. This idea will be employed in factories and manufactures. It consists in majoring each employee in a specific domain of the production process. Thanks to this, workers increase factory’s productivity because they only do one thing, very well and very quickly. So, the company makes more profit and gains time in its production process.
Then, in 1800, Eli Whitney created the notion of standardization. Its goal is to make similar parts in order that each part could substitute another one. It enables production costs to reduce significantly.
These two concepts were notably at the root of the Industrial