Operations management

Operations management designs and controls the processes that turn inputs (materials, labour, capital, information) into outputs (goods and services). Its scope covers product and process design, facility location and layout, capacity planning, production planning, inventory control, scheduling, quality management and supply chain coordination. Worked example: a hospital's operations problem is not medicine but flow — patients arrive unpredictably, beds are fixed, and staff are costly. Operations tools (capacity planning for peak hours, scheduling of surgeries, layout that shortens nurse walking distance) improve care without adding a single doctor. That is the operations view: every organisation, service or manufacturing, is a transformation process.