Principles of Operations Management, 2nd edition

Citation

Walley, P. (1999), "Principles of Operations Management, 2nd edition", International Journal of Operations & Production Management, Vol. 19 No. 4, pp. 95-96. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijopm.1999.19.4.95.1

As this is the second edition of the textbook, many teachers of operations management will already have seen a version of Les Galloway′s book. It is a concise book, reflecting the ”Principles′′ title, primarily aimed at diploma or MBA students. The book can only be described as conventional, with structure and contents presenting few, if any, surprises. The book has 13 chapters, each with a short case exercise at the end. Two appendices cover a lot of the mathematical elements to the operations syllabus, such as basic statistics, control charts and queuing theory formulae. There is also a section on the history of operations management concepts.

The reader is taken through the introduction of the operations role and a summary of operations strategy in the first two chapters. The first chapter is probably one of the weakest, taking a lot of narrative to explain the operations task, which could have been described in diagrammatic form more succinctly. The chapter is also a strange mixture of ideas, as it starts to look at process choice fairly quickly. The ”operations strategy′′ section could almost be re‐titled manufacturing strategy, as the methodology presented is so clearly influenced by the existing Hill and Platts‐Gregory frameworks. Nevertheless, the content here is thorough and generally explained quite well.

Two chapters look at design issues for products and services and there is another chapter which considers process/job design. The chapter on product design focuses on the product design process. The chapter on service design discusses the service characteristics of customer involvement, transience etc. and adds in material on the industrialisation of service. This section perhaps lacks an integrative framework, to provide structure to the discussion.

The author is most comfortable when he is explaining the planning and control elements of the book. A chapter on capacity planning takes the reader through the process systematically from forecasting, through to planning systems. Basic inventory management theory is covered well, with a good discussion of the limitations of EOQ applications. I found the chapter on batch scheduling very useful, with the structure of the book separating out many of the techniques which might confuse students. JIT is covered as a concept in its own chapter, but this section could be a little longer and more detailed, given its importance and contemporary relevance. The chapter on quality management, by contrast, is much longer and covers a lot of material from basic quality control and SPC to ”quality gaps′′ and TQM.

Overall, this book does a solid job of presenting basic operations management concepts and theories. It would have been better if more examples were properly described. Some tutors would probably like more than one mini case per chapter for students to work on.

However, as a basic textbook it is effective and would work well for a diploma standard course. It does have a quantitative element which would also appeal to students on engineering courses studying operations for the first time.