Operations Management: Processes and Supply Chains

Citation

Krajewski, L. J., & Malhotra, M. K. (2024). Operations Management: Processes and Supply Chains (14th ed., Global Edition). Pearson.

Chapter Summary

The 14th edition has fifteen chapters and four supplements. An opening chapter on creating value through operations is followed by three parts: Managing Processes (Chapters 2–7), Managing Customer Demand (Chapters 8–11) and Managing Supply Chains (Chapters 12–15). The four supplements (decision making, waiting lines, special inventory models and linear programming) sit next to the chapters that use them. Pearson describes the book as a framework for addressing process and supply chain issues that lets students take a manager's role through problems, cases and exercises, and says this edition shows how firms respond to unexpected events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine and inflation.

Chapter 1: Using Operations to Create Value, with Supplement A: Decision Making

The opening chapter sets out the book's view of operations as the way an organization creates value. Supplement A adds general decision-making tools that later chapters draw on.

Chapters 2–3: Process Strategy and Analysis; Quality and Performance

Part 1 starts with how processes are chosen and analysed, the unit of analysis that gives the book its subtitle. Chapter 3 turns to quality and the measurement of process performance.

Chapters 4–5: Lean Systems; Capacity Planning, with Supplement B: Waiting Lines

Chapter 4 covers lean systems. Chapter 5 deals with planning capacity, and Supplement B supplies the waiting-line (queueing) models that support capacity decisions in service and manufacturing processes.

Chapters 6–7: Constraint Management; Project Management

Part 1 closes with managing the constraints (bottlenecks) that limit a process's output and with planning and controlling projects.

Chapters 8–9: Forecasting; Inventory Management, with Supplement C: Special Inventory Models

Part 2 is about matching supply to customer demand. It begins with forecasting demand, then inventory management; Supplement C extends the basic inventory models to special cases.

Chapters 10–11: Operations Planning and Scheduling, with Supplement D: Linear Programming; Resource Planning

Chapter 10 covers planning and scheduling operations, with linear programming as the supporting optimization method in Supplement D. Chapter 11 treats resource planning, the planning of the materials and other resources that a production plan requires.

Chapters 12–15: Supply Chain Design; Supply Chain Logistic Networks; Supply Chain Integration; Supply Chain Sustainability

Part 3 widens the view from single processes to the network of firms. It moves from designing a supply chain to its logistics networks, then to integrating the chain, and ends with sustainability. The sustainability chapter appears as Chapter 15 in the Global Edition contents of both the 13th and 14th editions.

Key Concepts

Chapter 1 and Part 1: Managing Processes

• Operations as value creation: the book's starting point, that operations are how an organization creates value for customers.
• Process strategy and analysis: choosing how work will be done and analysing processes to improve them.
• Lean systems: operating systems designed to eliminate waste.
• Capacity and waiting lines: sizing resources to demand, with queueing models to evaluate service levels.
• Constraint management: identifying and managing the bottleneck that limits a process.

Part 2: Managing Customer Demand

• Forecasting: estimating future demand as the basis for planning.
• Inventory management: deciding how much stock to hold and when to reorder.
• Linear programming: an optimization technique for allocating limited resources, used for planning problems.
• Resource planning: translating plans into requirements for materials and other resources.

Part 3: Managing Supply Chains

• Supply chain design: structuring the network of suppliers, facilities and customers.
• Logistic networks: the facilities and transport links that move goods through the chain.
• Supply chain integration and sustainability: coordinating the chain as a whole and accounting for its environmental and social effects.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A clear organizing idea. The contents follow a simple logic from processes to customer demand to supply chains, so the quantitative tools appear where a manager would need them rather than in a separate methods section. The supplements keep the heavier techniques (queueing, special inventory models, linear programming) apart from the main narrative, so a course can include or skip them.
• Broad coverage in one volume. Lean systems, constraint management, project management, forecasting, inventory, scheduling, resource planning and four supply chain chapters together cover the topics of a standard first course in operations management.
• Practice-oriented. The publisher emphasises the manager's role, with hands-on problems, cases and exercises, and describes the previous edition as supported by chapter videos, simulations and experiential exercises. The 14th edition also brings in recent disruptions (the pandemic, war and inflation) as context for supply chain decisions.

Limitations

• Quantitative depth is introductory. Each technique gets a chapter or a supplement inside a broad survey. Students who want deeper models of variability in production systems or spreadsheet-based supply chain optimization will need a specialized text.
• Large textbook format. With fifteen chapters and four supplements, a single semester can rarely cover everything; instructors must choose.
• Digital resources sit behind a course platform. Much of the support the publisher describes (MyLab Operations Management, the eText) requires a course access code, which independent readers may not have.

Where It Fits in the Course

This book is one of two broad operations management textbooks in the course list. Heizer, Render and Munson's Operations and Supply Chain Management covers much the same ground but is organized around the strategic decisions operations managers make, with solved problems after each topic; either can serve as the main text, and students may use the other for extra worked examples. Slack, Brandon-Jones and Burgess's Operations Management is a European text organized around directing, designing, delivering and developing operations, with more case discussion and less emphasis on quantitative tools; it is a gentler or more managerial alternative.

For readers who want only the supply chain side, Hugos's Essentials of Supply Chain Management is a compact, practitioner-oriented introduction that can be read before Part 3. Two books go deeper after this one: Chopra's Supply Chain Management builds spreadsheet models for network design, planning, inventory, transport and pricing, extending Chapters 8–14, and Hopp and Spearman's Factory Physics develops laws linking throughput, work in process, cycle time and variability, a rigorous follow-up to the process, capacity and constraint chapters.

How to Use This Book

The book suits undergraduates in business or engineering taking a first course in operations management; Pearson's description of the previous edition names both undergraduate and graduate courses. Readers should be comfortable with algebra, and the forecasting, inventory and waiting-line material also draws on basic statistics.

• Core sequence: Chapter 1, then Part 1 in order (Chapters 2–7). Process analysis, quality, lean systems, capacity and constraints form a connected block.
• Demand side: Chapters 8–11. Forecasting (Chapter 8) and inventory (Chapter 9) are needed for almost every later topic; scheduling and resource planning (Chapters 10–11) can be covered more lightly in a short course.
• Supply chains: Chapters 12–15, read in order, since integration and sustainability build on design and logistics.
• Supplements: use Supplement A with Chapter 1 if decision tools are new; Supplement B with Chapter 5 for service-capacity problems; Supplements C and D when the course includes the corresponding quantitative work.

Work the end-of-chapter problems with a spreadsheet, and use the cases to practise turning a messy situation into one of the book's decisions: how much capacity, how much inventory, which process design. Before each chapter, skim its part opening so the chapter's place in the process–demand–supply chain sequence is clear.