A Modern Approach to Operations Management

Preface
While teaching the course on ‘Production Operations Management (POM)’ to my students in
India and abroad, I have felt a huge shortage of books and relevant materials on this subject.
The books available are mostly written with Western world perspective. The examples included
in those books are not very relevant to the students of developing countries. This has motivated
me to write this book which is based on my own teaching experiences and the feed back of my
students.
The book includes the background, the core concepts, and the models of POM. It is readable,
comprehensive, and contemporary in its approach. The concepts of Operations Management
have been delivered to the readers in a simple, straightforward manner, and without
mincing the words to avoid dilution of the materials itself.
The layout of the book has been organized to give the readers a sense of flow: (i) Beginning
with fundamentals of Production systems, Productivity, Location of plant, layout issues;
(ii) Core issues of POM like Forecasting, Operations planning, Purchasing systems and steps
involved in it, Inventory models, and MRP, Quality control, TQM, Project Management; and
finally (iii) the attention is focused to modern concepts on the subject like JIT, OPT, Automation,
etc. This makes the book more comprehensive in nature.
Adequate number of solved problems have been included to give the readers a chance to
enhance the learning process. Examples from local industries, agriculture sector, services (banking,
airlines, hotels, transport, etc.) have been included to make the chapters interesting and
palatable to the students’ taste.
I thank my students and colleagues for their constructive comments in making the book
more useful.
Lastly, I always believe in ‘kaizen’—the continuous improvement process in everything I
do and this goes with this book as well. I invite the readers, therefore, to send their comments
and suggestions to improve this book in its next edition.