Operations management is an area of management concerned with overseeing, designing, and controlling the process of production and redesigning business operations in the production of goods or services

History

The history of production and operation systems began around 5000 B.C. when Sumerian priests developed the ancient system of recording inventories, loans, taxes, and business transactions. The next major historical application of operation systems occurred in 4000 B.C. It was during this time that the Egyptians started using planning, organization, and control in large projects such as the construction of the pyramids. By 1100 B.C., labour was being specialized in China; by about 370 B.C., Xenophon described the advantages of dividing the various operations necessary for the production of shoes among different individuals in ancient Greece.

Recent trends in the field revolve around concepts such as:

• Business Process Re-engineering (launched by Michael Hammer in 1993): a business management strategy focusing on the analysis and design of workflows and business processes within an organization. BPR seeks to help companies radically restructure their organizations by focusing on the ground-up design of their business processes.
  

• Lean Manufacturing: a systemic method for the elimination of waste within a manufacturing process. Lean also takes into account waste created through overburden and waste created through unevenness in work loads.The term lean manufacturing was coined in the book The Machine that Changed the World.

• Six Sigma (an approach to quality developed at Motorola between 1985-1987): Six Sigma refers to control limits placed at six (6) standard deviations from the mean of a normal distribution, this became very famous after Jack Welch of General Electric launched a company-wide initiative in 1995 to adopt this set of methods. More recently, Six Sigma has included DMAIC (an abbreviation for Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control) for improving processes and DFSS-Design for Six Sigma  (for designing new products and new processes)

• Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems: a production system designed at the outset for rapid change in its structure, as well as its hardware and software components, in order to quickly adjust its production capacity and functionality within a part family in response to sudden market changes or intrinsic system change.