INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1

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 Agenda
 Course Outline
 What’s Operations Management (OM)?
 Why OM?
 Learning Outcomes

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Course Outline
 Course web site: https://online.mun.ca/
• Course assignment questions and the solutions, course notes,
practice questions and the solutions, and test solutions are found
on this web site.
 E-mail: ysong@mun.ca
• (Note: All email correspondence must be through @mun.ca
email accounts.
• Please note that I will not check D2L emails.
• If you have any question about the course, please email me
though mun.ca account and I will try my best to reply your email
within 24 hours (there are more than 150 students in the course
and thanks for your understanding under the current situation).

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Course Outline
 The following textbook is recommended (but not
required):
• Operations Management, 7th Canadian Edition
by William J. Stevenson, M. Hojati, and J. Cao. ,
H. Mottaghi, and B. Bakhtiari, McGraw-Hill.  ( 6th
edition is also good)
 I will be posting online PowerPoint slides on the
course webpage as the semester goes on. You need
to download the note into your computer and then
click the right-bottom corner of each slide to
listen to the explanation of each slide.
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Course Outline
 Three assignments will be turned in during the
semester.
• You can form a group for each assignment with maximal up
to 5 students. The assignment turned in by groups of 6 or
more students will NOT be accepted. On the other hand,
you are welcome to submit an assignment prepared by
yourself alone.
• Please include your MUN ID(s) and name(s) on the first
page.

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Course Outline
 You can prepare your solutions for each assignment by using
Microsoft Word or other software and then upload the file
to the course website.
 You also can prepare your solutions by hand-writing but you
need to scan and integrate all the pages into one PDF file
(submitting multiple files for one assignment is NOT
acceptable).
 Assignments submitted late will receive only half of mark
toward overall mark for that assignment. Assignments not
submitted two hours after the due-in time will be given a
zero mark (usually the solutions will be posted two hours
after the due-in time).
 Submission through email is NOT acceptable.

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Course Outline
 Three will be three exams (please find the dates and the
times on the last page of the Course Outline).

Three Assignments (3×5=15%) 15%

Two Midterm Exams (2*30=60%) 60%
Final Exam 25%
 Copying someone else’s file/answer and making minor
modifications is unacceptable and will be considered as
academic dishonesty under the University rules. All parties
will be penalized.

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Course Outline
 The lecture notes, displays, and all material delivered or
provided in B3401 by Professor Peter Song, including any
visual or audio recording thereof, are subject to copyright
owned by Peter Song, unless otherwise noted.  It is prohibited
to record or copy to others by any means, in any format, openly
or surreptitiously, in whole or in part, in the absence of express
written permission from Peter Song any of the lectures or
materials provided or published in any form during or from the
course.
 Students must not publish, send, post on an internet site,
sell, rent, or otherwise distribute this content without the
instructor's express permission.
  
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 Three Basic Functions
Operations Function in a typical business
organization:

Operations

Finance Marketing

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 Three Basic Functions
 Operations: being responsible for creation of
goods/services
 Marketing: selling and promoting the
goods/services; communicating customers’
needs
 Finance: securing resources at favorable
prices and allocating those resources
throughout the organization

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 Integrating Business Functions
 Operations & Finance
 Provision of funds
 Economic analysis of investment proposals
 Operations & Marketing
 Communicating the customers’ needs
 The organization’s capability, i.e.,
manufacturability of the design

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 Operations Management

Design, planning, control, improvement of the systems

that create a firm’s final products/services.

Inputs:
Outputs:
Human Resources, Transformation Goods
Machines, Process Services
Materials, Info, Tech
Feedback

Control
Feedback Feedback

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 Transformation Process:
Hospital
 INPUTS:
Doctors, nurses, Building, Medical supplies,
Equipment, Lab etc
 PROCESS:
Examination, Surgery, Monitoring, Medication,
Therapy etc
 OUTPUT:
Healthy patients

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 Transformation Process:
Food Industry
 INPUTS:
Raw vegetables, Water, Energy, Labor,
Building, Metal sheets, Equipment etc
 PROCESS:
Cleaning, Making cans, cutting, Cooking,
Packing, Labeling etc
 OUTPUT:
Canned vegetables

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 Manufacturing vs Service
 Tangible process vs intangible process
 Customer contact, use of inventory, and
demand variability
 Uniformity of inputs
 Labor content vs capital content
 Productivity measurement
 Quality assurance etc

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 Manufacturing vs Service
Key Differences:
Characteristic Manufacturing Service
Output Tangible Intangible
Customer contact Low High
Uniformity of input High Low
Labor content Low High
Uniformity of output High Low

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 Value-added vs Efficiency
 Value-added: the difference between the cost
of inputs and the value or price of outputs.

 Efficiency: performing all activities at minimum

cost and time (The goal is to produce a good
or provide a service by using the smallest
inputs of resources as quickly as possible).

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 OM Decisions
 Design Decisions:
 Product/service
 Processes
 Capacity, location, layout etc

 Operating decisions:
 Inventory planning/control
 Scheduling
 Material requirements planning
 Quality assurance etc

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 OM Decision Making
Approaches
 Trade-offs analysis
 Models: physical & quantitative
 System approach: the whole is greater
than the sum of its individual parts
 Establishing priorities: Some elements
are important than others

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 Why OM?
 To gain a comprehensive knowledge of
“business”
 Relevance to other business functions
 OM activities being the core of all business
organizations from the cost perspective
 To apply the OM concepts and tools in
managing other functions of a business
 Career opportunities (manufacturing, service,
planning, scheduling etc)

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 Learning Outcomes
 Recognize the important role of
operations in any organization’s success
 Develop a comprehensive understanding
of issues and decisions and how to link
them together
 Know the basic concepts and techniques
 Solve real-life problems

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