Matching Supply with Demand: an Introduction to Operations Management

Gerard Cachon and Christian Terwiesch, Matching Supply with Demand: An Introduction to Operations Management, 3e is the most authoritative, cutting-edge book for operations management MBAs. The book demands rigorous analysis on the part of students without requiring consistent use of sophisticated mathematical modeling to perform it. When the use of quantitative tools or formal modeling is indicated, it is only to perform the necessary analysis needed to inform and support a practical business solution.

The guiding principle in the development of Matching Supply with Demand has been “real operations, real solutions.” “Real operations” means that most of the chapters in this book are written from the perspective of a specific company so that the material in this text will come to life by discussing it in a real-world context. “Real solutions” means that equations and models do not merely provide students with mathematical gymnastics for the sake of an intellectual exercise.

Professor Terwiesch is the Andrew M. Heller Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He also is a professor in Wharton’s Operations and Information Management Department as well as a Senior Fellow at  the Leonard Davis Institute for Health Economics. His research on operations management, research and development, and innovation management appears in many of the leading academic journals, including Management Science, Operations Research, Marketing Science, and Organization Science. He has received numerous teaching awards for his courses in Wharton’s MBA and executive education programs. Professor Terwiesch has researched with and consulted for various organizations, including a project on concurrent engineering for BMW, supply chain management for Intel and Medtronic, and product customization for Dell. Most of his current work relates to health care and innovation management. In the health care arena, some of Professor Terwiesch’s recent projects include the analysis of capacity allocation for cardiac surgery procedures at the University of California–San Francisco and at Penn Medicine, the impact of emergency room crowding on hospital capacity and revenues (also at Penn Medicine), and the usage of intensive care beds in the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. In the innovation area, recent projects include the management of the clinical development portfolio at Merck, the development of open innovation systems, and the design of patient-centered care processes in the Veterans Administration hospital system. 

Professor Cachon is the Fred R. Sullivan Professor of Operations, Information, and Decisons at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches a variety of undergraduate, MBA, executive, and Ph.D. courses in operations management. His research focuses on operations strategy, and in particular, on how operations are used to gain competitive advantage.