Customer Reviews

Operations Management: Strategy and Analysis (6th Edition)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I believe a textbook is best reviewed by an instructor who has taught from it. At the University of Alabama in Birmingham, where I served as an adjunct professor in the fall of 1999, my MBA students and I dissected this book, cover-to-cover. It was a rewarding odyssey. As the subtitle suggests, the authors made every attempt to relate managerial decisions on operations to an organization's strategic pursuits. In this fifth edition of their text, the concept of processes was used not only to integrate service organizations' procedures into traditional manufacturing themes but also to draw attention to the growing use of processes and flows as the bases for reinventing adaptable organizations. This lays a good foundation for understanding the sort of efforts at the Center for Coordination Sciences at MIT where the Process Handbook, explicating interdependencies, has just been licensed to the Phios Corporation.

With a surge in the use of Enterprise Resource Planning software such as SAP, the treatment of Materials Requirements Planning and the introduction of a new chapter on Supply Chain Management are very timely. The future belongs to web-based transaction processing with forward and backward linkages to customers and suppliers respectively.

The authors resourcefully illustrated their topics with actual Managerial Practices and Internet Activities. We analyzed every one of the nineteen Case Studies but sidestepped the Experiential Learning projects only because we did not have enough time. Though we never found the Student CD Version of the text, the OM5 software on-line was quite useful even to analytically challenged students.

As the instructor, I appreciated the copious teaching aids that accompany the book. The Instructor's Manual was used with appropriate course outlines from other universities available on the web to fashion a course syllabus aimed at the diverse capabilities of the graduate students. The Solutions Manual helped with the two problem sets assigned and graded every week, as did the Test Bank and the Computerized Test Bank with the examinations. I borrowed a few of the slides from the Instructor's Resource Disk CD-ROM with PowerPoint Presentation which were also available on-line with a protected password. Even without the popcorn, the Operations Management in Action videos were worth a million words.

I have devoted so much space to evaluating the teaching aids because they are fast becoming the discriminating factors among textbooks of virtually equal merits. My thanks go to the college representatives and faculty services of both Addison Wesley and Prentice Hall who, even during their merger, supplied me with teaching aids as soon as they were available.

This text is geared toward a business school curriculum hence I must guard my assessment as someone who taught courses in Production Planning to graduate engineering students at Rutgers University starting in 1974. This book does not have the analytical rigor of the text I used then nor, say, Factory Physics by Hopp, et. al. that some use today. Nonetheless, I believe, tutorials on the general Simplex Method for Linear Programming as well as the Transportation Simplex Method and the Assignment Method should be included as Supplements. For illustrating the concepts of Shadow Prices and simple Post-Optimality analyses, these iterations are instructive. A general Errata Page for typo's and errors, especially in the problems, should be maintained on-line and be made generally accessible.

I used this book during my MBA studies. It was okay, but I found it got a little detailed and too wordy at times. A more succinct writing style may have helped. Otherwise, the coverage was top-notch, since I really liked the material. The various inventory, forecasting and queuing models were nicely presented, as was linear programming. This book makes you appreciate how complex things are in the real world. Further, it offers you some mental tools to help tame that complexity, like SPC, six-sigma indices, and decision tree analysis.

The companion disk had some very useful things on it: MS Project, a simulation program, and a process-mapping program. I did not use the author's Excel program, though, as we were forced to develop our own during the class.

I used this book in my MBA studies and found it to be one of the best texts in any subject. As the subtitle suggests, it covers both strategic and analytical (or tactical) aspects of ops mgmt.
The book is a well rounded presentation of of the subject using text, graphics, equations, examples, and cases.

The most striking part of the book is in Aggregate Planning. For anyone who has worked in industry, we all know about strategic plans. How often though are other working plans created that are well linked to a strategy? Chapter 14 is the first time I have encountered a treatise on how to approach this. In addressing the types of plans, levels of plans, and their inter- relationships, the student is given the tools needed to actually implement a grand strategy, linked to workable sets of more detailed plans for each function.

Outstanding.

I used this book at FEI , where I studied Industrial Engineering , and it was a very rewarding experience. The book is very well written and easy to understand, combining strategic and operational issues in a excellent way. The charts, graphics and pictures are also very helpfull to visualize the problems and makes the book neat to read. My only complains goes to the little chapter on operations research and also the MRP chapter should be more extensive.

We used this book for an MBA course and found it to have numerous errors throughout. Additionally, many of the sections are written to an audience of imbeciles, as the concepts of "repeatability" and "globalization" are explained in extreme detail. The text needs to be updated, especially the section on ERP (no longer in infancy stage). Nothing against Coach K, but the editors for this book have dropped the ball.

Excellent book. Contents covers everything we have to learn on university. I would like to have a translated version, so it would be easier to understand.

For a used book, the quality was pretty good. The seller was truthful about the condition of the book. Overall I am very satisfied with the quality of service. The seller is prompt in answering any questions.

Would recommend this seller. Item came in condition specified and quicker then expected! Thanks a lot!

24 days 4 emails, 2 missed homework assignments. That was my experience with this seller. I have purchased most of my books online, so I'm familiar with reasonable shipping times. This was my worst experience ever. Very poor communication from the seller, slow and often no response to my emails and no attempt to make up for a shipping error on his part. I'm very dissatisfied.

I think the book is pretty good as far as contents go, however, i find it a dull read. It also places too much emphasis on the service sector. I would recommend to complement it with another book such as Supply Chain Management (Lambert).