Operation Strategy Second Edition Nigel Slack and Michael Lewis Ideal for Advanced Undergraduate and Postgraduate students, this book builds on concepts from Strategic Management, Operations Management, Marketing and HRM to give students a comprehensive understanding of Operations Strategy. Features *Comprehensive and accessible with authoritative authorship and an excellent blend of theory and practice *A European context *Engaging case studies *Teaching resources including an Instructor's Manual with extensive case notes and PowerPoint slides at www.pearsoned.co.uk/slack. What's New? *This new edition has been focused to concentrate on the most significant topics in the subject, with 10 chapters replacing the previous 15. New material has been added and coverage of some older topics has been revised (see new table of contents). *End-of-chapter case exercises have been replaced by a major end-of-book section of Harvard-type' cases. *New to the Instructor's resources online: additional cases and a set of questions and answers for class use / exam use.* New coverage of hot topics, such as the implications of ERP and Six Sigma on ops strategy, agility and it's inter-relationship with lean, supply management issues, operations strategy for competitive advantage and SCM, and implementation.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From the Back Cover
Operation Strategy
Second Edition
Nigel Slack and Michael Lewis
Ideal for Advanced Undergraduate and Postgraduate students, this book builds on concepts from Strategic Management, Operations Management, Marketing and HRM to give students a comprehensive understanding of Operations Strategy.
Features
- Comprehensive and accessible with authoritative authorship and an excellent blend of theory and practice
- A European context
- Engaging case studies
- Teaching resources including an Instructor’s Manual with extensive case notes and PowerPoint slides at www.pearsoned.co.uk/slack.
What’s New?
- This new edition has been focused to concentrate on the most significant topics in the subject, with 10 chapters replacing the previous 15. New material has been added and coverage of some older topics has been revised (see new table of contents).
- End-of-chapter case exercises have been replaced by a major end-of-book section of ‘Harvard-type’ cases.
- New to the Instructor’s resources online: additional cases and a set of questions and answers for class use / exam use.
- New coverage of hot topics, such as the implications of ERP and Six Sigma on ops strategy, agility and it’s inter-relationship with lean, supply management issues, operations strategy for competitive advantage and SCM, and implementation.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Names are important. They are used to set expectations as much as they are used to describe something. This particularly applies to the seemingly simple title of this book: Operations Strategy. Depending on the punctuation you use, the meaning you ascribe to either word, or even the order of the words, could refer to several areas of study. These words could refer to the larger-term impact of day-to-day operations, the medium-term direction of a narrowly defined organizational function, or the more nebulous and dynamic interaction between all operational resources and the external requirements they attempt to satisfy. It is this last interpretation that forms the focus of this book.
INTRODUCTION
Just as some physical objects are so big that it can be difficult to see their whole, some concepts are so broadly based that they can be difficult to define. Operations strategy, as we see it, is like this. It is so all-embracing that it is easy to downplay the significance of the subject. Yet, operations strategy both lies at the heart of how organizations manage their strategic intent in practice, and is the context within which managers make strategic decisions. Take a look at some of the decisions with which operations strategy is concerned:
- How should the organization satisfy the requirements of its customers?
- What intrinsic capabilities should the organization try and develop as the foundation for its long-term success?
- How specialized should the organization's activities become?
- Should the organization sacrifice some of its objectives in order to excel at others?
- How big should the organization be?
- Where should the organization locate its resources?
- When should it expand or contract, and by how much?
- What should it do itself and what should it contract out to other businesses?
- How should it develop relationships with other organizations?
- What type of technology should it invest in?
- How should it organize the way it develops new products and services?
- How should it bind together its resources into an organizational structure?
- How should the organization's resources and processes be improved and developed over time?
- What guiding principles should shape the way any organization formulates its operations strategies?
All these questions are not merely important, they are fundamental. No organization, whether large or small, for-profit, or not-for-profit, in the services or manufacturing sector, international or local, can ignore such questions. Operations strategy is central, ubiquitous, and vital to any organization's sustained success.
THE AIM OF THIS BOOK
The aim of this book is provide a treatment of operations strategy that is clear, well structured, and interesting. It seeks to apply some of the ideas of operations strategy in a variety of businesses and organizations. The text provides a logical path through the key activities and decisions of operations strategy as well as covering the broad principles that underlie the subject and the way in which operations strategies are put together in practice.
More specifically, the text aims to be:
- Balanced in its treatment of the subject. In addition to taking the orthodox "market-led" approach to operations strategy, the book also provides an alternative but complementary "resource-based" perspective.
- Conceptual in the way it treats the decisions, activities, and processes that together form an organization's operations strategy. Although some examples are quantified, the overall treatment in the book is managerial and practical.
- Comprehensive in its coverage of the more important ideas and issues that are relevant to most types of business. In any book covering such a broad area as operations strategy, one cannot cover everything. However, we believe that the more important issues are all addressed.
- Grounded in the various bodies of knowledge that underlie operations strategy. Theory boxes are included in most of the chapters, which introduce concepts and principles, often from other academic disciplines, thereby illuminating the particular operations strategy issue being discussed.
- International in the examples that are used throughout the text. Of the more than 70 boxes describing practical operations strategy issues, approximately 35 percent are from the United States, 35 percent are from Europe, and 30 percent are either generally international or from elsewhere in the world.
WHO SHOULD USE THIS BOOK?
This book is intended to provide a broad introduction to operations strategy for anyone wishing to understand the strategic importance and scope of the operations function; for example:
- Undergraduates pursuing business or technical degrees (although we assume a prior knowledge of the basics of operations management).
- MBA students should find that this book both links and integrates their experience and study of operations management with their core studies in business strategy.
- Post-graduate students pursuing other specialized masters degrees should find that this book provides them with a well-grounded approach to the subject.
- Executives will also be able to relate the practical and pragmatic structure of the book to the more conceptual and theoretical issues discussed within the structure.
DISTINCTIVE FEATURES
Clear structure
The book employs coherent models of the subject that run through each part of the text and explain how the chapters fit into the overall subject. Key questions set the scene at the beginning of each chapter and also provide a structure for the summary at the end of each chapter.
Illustration-based
The study of operations, even at a strategic level, is essentially a practical subject and cannot be taught in a purely theoretical manner. Because of this we have used both abstracted examples and "boxed" examples that explain some issues faced by real operations.
Theory boxes
Operations strategy is a practical subject which is driven by theoretical ideas. Most chapters contain one or more theory boxes that explain the underlying ideas that have contributed to our understanding of the issues being discussed.
Case exercises
Every chapter includes a case exercise including a brief case study suitable for class discussion. The cases are usually short enough to serve as illustrations, which can be referred to in class, but have sufficient content to serve as the basis for case sessions.
Selected further reading
Every chapter ends with a list of further reading which further expands on the topic covered in the chapter, or treats some important related issues.
Web site
A Web site, www.prenhall.com/slack, is available, which helps students to develop a firm understanding of each issue covered in the book and provides lecturers with pedagogical assistance. There is also a teacher's manual available.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great comprehensive source,
By J. Mayers "May" (Boston) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Operations Strategy (Paperback)
During the years, I have accumulated an extensive operational strategy reference library, ranging from manufacturing, government and service issues. This is an excellent book for more comprehensive learning of the discipline. Besides the holistic view of the subject, I think it has many interesting points related to the content of operational strategy. This books focus main thesis is the need of sound reconciliation between market requirements and the operational resources of the organization. Great diagrams and charts add tremendous value to the writing. The book could be improved for teaching purposes with the inclusion of cases.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Successfully aligning Demand and Supply,
By
This review is from: Operations Strategy (Paperback)
As a practitioner and educator, I think the Operations Matrix provided in this book is at the core of the divide between sales and marketing and operations - linking strategy with execution and balancing demand and supply; combine the matrix with S&OP and you have one powerful solution to what I've called the "Disconnect Issue" between Sales and Marketing and Operations, which must be fixed if there is any possible way of aligning a Supply Chain. The beauty of the matrix is its simplicity! Sometimes the most obvious solutions are the simplest ones.Pat Lupica [...]
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Platitudes and useless definitions,
By Ann Onymous (Sweden) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Operations Strategy (Paperback)
Of all the business literature I have read during my MBA this was definitely one of the least beneficial or inspiring. It gives very few useful models or theories, much of its information is much too obvious to be interesting and it uses examples that are either wrong in facts or don't really support the theories of the book. You will have forgotten about most of it as soon as you put it away but don't be sorry for that, this book would never help you achieve better operations anyway.The sand cone theory described briefly in thios book but better elsewhere is one of few interesting and useful theories of the book. Forget about the operating strategy matrix, you won't be able to make any use of that in any organisation.
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Inside This Book
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Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs):
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lean operations, recycling services, generic performance objectives, sustainable alignment, operations strategy analysis, service development and organisation, strategy decision areas, process technology strategy, supply network strategy, strategy decision categories, operations performance objectives, intended market position, operations strategy implementation, operations strategy decisions, influence operations strategy, changing capacity levels, process technology decisions, lean approach, capacity strategy, soft dimensions, substitutes for strategy, capacity increments, average delivery time Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Six Sigma, New York, Harvard Business Review, John Wiley, Harvard Business School Press, The Economist, Financial Times Prentice Hall, Strategic Management Journal, Oxford University Press, Sloan Management Review, Enterprise Resource Planning, May June, Black Belts, First Class, Business Process Reengineering, Total Quality Management, Pursuing the Competitive Edge, California Management Review, Business Class, Capacity Supply Process Development, Seven-Eleven Japan, The Free Press, Green Belts, Excellence Model, Operations Operations Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
lean operations, recycling services, generic performance objectives, sustainable alignment, operations strategy analysis, service development and organisation, strategy decision areas, process technology strategy, supply network strategy, strategy decision categories, operations performance objectives, intended market position, operations strategy implementation, operations strategy decisions, influence operations strategy, changing capacity levels, process technology decisions, lean approach, capacity strategy, soft dimensions, substitutes for strategy, capacity increments, average delivery time Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Six Sigma, New York, Harvard Business Review, John Wiley, Harvard Business School Press, The Economist, Financial Times Prentice Hall, Strategic Management Journal, Oxford University Press, Sloan Management Review, Enterprise Resource Planning, May June, Black Belts, First Class, Business Process Reengineering, Total Quality Management, Pursuing the Competitive Edge, California Management Review, Business Class, Capacity Supply Process Development, Seven-Eleven Japan, The Free Press, Green Belts, Excellence Model, Operations Operations Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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