Operations Now: Supply Chain Profitability and Performance with Student DVD (Mcgraw-hill Irwin Series Operations Management)

Operations Now introduces operations from a vantage point that encompasses both the entire organization and the broader supply network. The author begins his discussion of operations management by first establishing the goal to which any high quality operation must aspire: the goal of profitability. Operations Now presents operations within a context that acknowledges its interactions both within all functional areas of an organization as well as the supply chain network serving it. Thus, students not majoring in operations management immediately understand why they are studying a subject that had previously seemed to them irrelevant; operations majors receive valuable instruction in how their chosen field affects and facilitates other functional areas within the enterprise and aligns with the overall goals of the organization.

Byron J. Finch is a Professor of Operations Management in the Richard T. Farmer School of Business Administration at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. He earned his BS and MS degrees from Iowa State University and received his doctorate from the William Terry College of Business Administration at the University of Georgia in 1986. Dr. Finch's research interests have evolved from the topic of manufacturing planning and control systems early in his career, to spreadsheet models to his most recent research endeavors involving the use of Internet-based conversations as information to improve quality and quality expectations in the anonymous environments of online auction. Research projects that Dr. Finch has been involved with have resulted in numerous publications in such outlets as the Journal of Operations Management, International Journal of Production Research, and Quality Management Journal. Dr. Finch is also the author and co-author of The Management Guide to Internet Resources (1997) and Operations Management: Competing in a Changing Environment (1995).