Career Opportunities in Operations Management
Vijay Prakash Srivastava
Like many other subjects management education has many disciplines. Students of management have to compulsorily go through the topics and principles under general management combined with overview of all major disciplines of management. However a postgraduate degree or diploma of two years has a provision of specializing in a particular branch of management. Well known branches of management include marketing, finance, human resource etc. Operation management is a lesser known management discipline but no less important than the ones generally talked about.
In general terms operations management is concerned with converting materials and labour into desired goods and services in an efficient manner with an objective of maximizing the profit of an organization. It entails maximizing production by procuring and utilizing available resources that include raw materials, people, equipment, technology, information and others. It has more to do with planning, designing, organising, controlling and optimising the process of production. Operations management ensures that a unit efficiently and successfully turns inputs into outputs. It is clear that operations management is delivery oriented.
The success of operations management is decided in terms of adherence to production schedule with quality and quantity of targeted production.
Operations management shouldn’t be considered similar to Logistics management. Operations management is wider and Logistics management is just a part of it. Logistics management is planning, execution and control of the procurement, movement and stationing of workers, material and other resources in order to achieve the objective of a campaign, plan, project or strategy. Logistics management may very well be defined as the management of inventory (of any type) in motion and rest.
Both manufacturing and service organizations need the function of operations management which covers a process from beginning to close. Manufacturing industries have flourished since decades and centuries. Now with boom in services sector opportunities for operations managers have become manifold. As an operations management professional, one may add immense value to the performance, profitability and customer service of an organization. With such an objective, interested young people may explore career opportunities in this branch of management.
Coverage: Operations management too has a wide coverage. As a student of the subject , you’ll be exposed to following topics among others -
- Facilities planning
- Industrial engineering concepts
- Operations research
- Logistics management
- Financial accounting
- Production Planning and control
- Industrial and managerial economics
- Materials management
- Business forecasting
- Manufacturing systems
- Service operations
- Business ethics
- Supply chain management
- Health, safety and environ-mental issues
- Marketing management
- Theory of constraints
- Enterprise Resource Planning
- Total Quality Management
Industrial relations and HR with regard to operations management
(Image Courtesy : Google)