Operations Strategy: Principles and Practice

Operations Strategy: Principles and Practice provides a unified framework for operations strategy. The book shows how to tailor the operational system to maximize value and competitive advantage. Conceptual thinking and financial optimization yield guidelines for implementation. This dual emphasis on principles and practice is reflected by analytical models that are illustrated with detailed examples and a dozen case studies of real business situations.

The book uses three complementary views of operations--the competency, resource, and process view--and contains integrating case studies. Consequently, the book has four parts:

* Part 1 describes the concept of operations strategy and illustrates how trade-offs among operational competencies (such as cost, quality, responsiveness, and flexibility) can provide competitive advantage.

* Part 2 introduces the resource view and shows how to tailor real assets to business strategy. Four chapters analyze four important resource decisions: sizing (how much capacity is appropriate?), timing (when to expand or contract?), type (what kind of flexibility is needed?), and location (where do we place assets in a global network?)

* Part 3 considers the process view and shows how to tailoring activity networks to business strategy. Four chapters analyze four important processes in any operation: strategic sourcing (managing inputs), demand and revenue management (managing outputs), risk management and operational hedging, and improvement and innovation management (preparing for the future).

* Part 4 presents three business cases that integrate various elements of the book. The Harley-Davidson case investigates the four resource decisions, the Seagate Technology case studies operational hedging, and the Peapod case illustrates demand and revenue management and mass customized services.

Jan A. Van Mieghem is the Harold L. Stuart Distinguished Professor of Managerial Economics and Professor of Operations Management at the Kellogg School of Management of Northwestern University, Dr. Van Mieghem is the chairman of the Managerial Economics and Decision Sciences department. He teaches a variety of operations courses in Kellogg's full-time and executive programs. His research focuses on manufacturing, service and supply chain operations and studies both strategic questions as well as tactical execution. His articles have appeared in the leading journals of the field. He is past editor of the operations and supply chain area of Operations Research and has served on the editorial board of several journals. Professor Van Mieghem is the co-author of the MBA textbook Managing Business Process Flows: Principles of Operations Management. He received his Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University in 1995. Born in Belgium, he currently lives in Evanston, Illinois, with his wife and four children.