Operations Management: A Curtain Raiser

Around 1750, at the beginning of the industrial revolution, economic growth was negligible across the nations, and there was homogeneity in prosperity levels (Spence, 2012). With the introduction of steam and subsequent mechanization, productivity and per capita incomes started to rise in Europe, and the world witnessed “great divergenceGreat divergence” in productivity. The revolution spread to the United States with the development of interchangeable machine-made parts and then mass production. The emergence of vertically integrated behemoths like Ford Motors and General Motors was the outcome of these innovations in production. The production paradigm was further changed with the introduction of “lean production systemsLean production systems” in Japan—Toyota Motor Corporation took the lead in evolving lean thinking. Operations managementOperations management lies at the core of these production processes. This chapter discusses the core concepts in operations management and the related models.