Operations Strategy/Overview

What is operations strategy?

Introduction

To look at what operations strategy is, we would break the word into the two separate forming words: operations and strategy. Both these words act as antitheses to the other, see Slack and Lewis(2002). Where operations deals with the functions and procedures involved in the day-to-day processes of manufacturing goods and products, strategy deals with the direction and scope of an organisation over a long period of time on how they deliver to their clients. It turns out that the name itself holds information about the broad subject that tends to bind together routine process management, i.e., operations managements with a foresight of things forming up way ahead in the future.

In this chapter, we will focus on providing the reader with a proper definition of operations strategy and the difference between operations strategy and operations management. Furthermore, we will also shed light on how the market tends to stear the strategic focus of operations. At the end of this chapter, the user would have significant knowledge of:

• What operations strategy is?
• What the difference between operations strategy and operations management is?
• How markets govern the strategic focus of operations?
• How operations strategy helps a market mature and evolve?

Topics we'd be covering

• Operations strategy: working on a definition
• Difference between operations strategy and operations management
• Approaches towards operations strategy

References

• Slack, N. and Lewis, M., Operations strategy, ISBN 0273637819, 2002, Prentice Hall: Harlow, Essex, p.3.