Publisher's Synopsis
Global competition has caused fundamental changes in the competitive environment of manufacturing industries. Firms must develop strategic objectives which, upon achievement, result in a competitive advantage in the market place. However, for almost all manufacturing industries, an increased productivity and better overall efficiency of the production line are the most important goals. OM is the management function applied to manufacturing, service industries and no-profit organizations and is responsible for all activities directly concerned with making a product, collecting various inputs and converting them into desired outputs through operations. Thus, OM includes inputs, outputs, and operations. Outputs are goods, services, staff wages, and waste materials. Operations include activities such as manufacturing, assembly, packing, serving, and training. The operations can be of two categories: those that add value and those with no added value. The first category includes the product processing steps (e.g. operations that transform raw materials into good products). The second category is actually a kind of waste. Waste consists of all unnecessary movements for completing an operation, which should therefore be eliminated. Moreover, it is important to underline, right from the start, that the packaging system can represent a source of waste, but at the same time, a possible source of opportunities. Before waste-to-energy solutions, for example, it is possible to consider the use of recycled packages for shipping products. The same package may be used more than once; for example, if a product is sent back by the consumer, the product package could be used for the next shipment. A typical supply chain is an end-to-end process with the main purpose of production, transportation, and distribution of products. It is relative to the products' movements normally from the supplier to the manufacturer, distributor, retailer and finally the end consumer. All products moved are contained in packages and for this reason the analysis of the physical logistics flows and the role of packaging is a very important issue for the definition and design of manufacturing processes, improvement of layout and increase in companies' efficiency. Trends and Tools for Operations Management presents the contributions of a selected group of researchers, reporting new ideas, original results and practical experiences as well as systematizing some fundamental topics in operations management. Although it represents only a small sample of the research activity on operations management, people from diverse backgrounds, academia, industry and research as well as engineering students can take advantage of this book. Global competition has caused fundamental changes in the competitive environment of manufacturing industries. Firms must develop strategic objectives which, upon achievement, result in a competitive advantage in the market place. However, for almost all manufacturing industries, an increased productivity and better overall efficiency of the production line are the most important goals. OM is the management function applied to manufacturing, service industries and no-profit organizations and is responsible for all activities directly concerned with making a product, collecting various inputs and converting them into desired outputs through operations. Thus, OM includes inputs, outputs, and operations. Outputs are goods, services, staff wages, and waste materials. Operations include activities such as manufacturing, assembly, packing, serving, and training. The operations can be of two categories: those that add value and those with no added value. The first category includes the product processing steps (e.g. operations that transform raw materials into good products). The second category is actually a kind of waste. Waste consists of all unnecessary movements for completing an operation, which should therefore be eliminated. Moreover, it is important to underline, right from the start, that the packaging system can represent a source of waste, but at the same time, a possible source of opportunities. Before waste-to-energy solutions, for example, it is possible to consider the use of recycled packages for shipping products. The same package may be used more than once; for example, if a product is sent back by the consumer, the product package could be used for the next shipment. A typical supply chain is an end-to-end process with the main purpose of production, transportation, and distribution of products. It is relative to the products' movements normally from the supplier to the manufacturer, distributor, retailer and finally the end consumer. All products moved are contained in packages and for this reason the analysis of the physical logistics flows and the role of packaging is a very important issue for the definition and design of manufacturing processes, improvement of layout and increase in companies' efficiency. Trends and Tools for Operations Management presents the contributions of a selected group of researchers, reporting new ideas, original results and practical experiences as well as systematizing some fundamental topics in operations management. Although it represents only a small sample of the research activity on operations management, people from diverse backgrounds, academia, industry and research as well as engineering students can take advantage of this book. Global competition has caused fundamental changes in the competitive environment of manufacturing industries. Firms must develop strategic objectives which, upon achievement, result in a competitive advantage in the market place. However, for almost all manufacturing industries, an increased productivity and better overall efficiency of the production line are the most important goals. OM is the management function applied to manufacturing, service industries and no-profit organizations and is responsible for all activities directly concerned with making a product, collecting various inputs and converting them into desired outputs through operations. Thus, OM includes inputs, outputs, and operations. Outputs are goods, services, staff wages, and waste materials. Operations include activities such as manufacturing, assembly, packing, serving, and training. The operations can be of two categories: those that add value and those with no added value. The first category includes the product processing steps (e.g. operations that transform raw materials into good products). The second category is actually a kind of waste. Waste consists of all unnecessary movements for completing an operation, which should therefore be eliminated. Moreover, it is important to underline, right from the start, that the packaging system can represent a source of waste, but at the same time, a possible source of opportunities. Before waste-to-energy solutions, for example, it is possible to consider the use of recycled packages for shipping products. The same package may be used more than once; for example, if a product is sent back by the consumer, the product package could be used for the next shipment. A typical supply chain is an end-to-end process with the main purpose of production, transportation, and distribution of products. It is relative to the products' movements normally from the supplier to the manufacturer, distributor, retailer and finally the end consumer. All products moved are contained in packages and for this reason the analysis of the physical logistics flows and the role of packaging is a very important issue for the definition and design of manufacturing processes, improvement of layout and increase in companies' efficiency. Trends and Tools for Operations Management presents the contributions of a selected group of researchers, reporting new ideas, original results and practical experiences as well as systematizing some fundamental topics in operations management. Although it represents only a small sample of the research activity on operations management, people from diverse backgrounds, academia, industry and research as well as engineering students can take advantage of this book.
