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MANAGING PROJECTS

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Projects represent nonroutine business activities that often have long-term strategic ramifications for a firm. In this chapter, we examined how projects differ from routine business activities and discussed the major phases of projects. We noted how environmental changes have resulted in increased attention being paid to projects and project management over the past decade. In the second half of the chapter, we introduced some basic tools that businesses can use when planning for and controlling projects. Both Gantt charts and network diagrams give managers a visual picture of how a project is going. Network diagrams have the added advantage of showing the precedence between activities, as well as the critical path(s). We wrapped up the chapter by showing how these concepts are embedded in inexpensive yet powerful software packages such as Microsoft Project. If you want to learn more about project management, we encourage you to take a look at the Web site for the Proj...
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MANAGING CAPACITY

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Capacity decisions are among the most important strategic decisions operations and supply chain managers make. As the opening case study on manufacturing flu vaccines suggests, such decisions can have far-reaching effects for a business, its customers, and even society. Even though capacity decisions are inherently risky, this chapter showed how managers can think about and analyze these decisions in a logical manner. Specifically, we talked about three common capacity strategies and also demonstrated various methods for evaluating the financial pros and cons of capacity alternatives. We devoted the last section of the chapter to analyzing process  capacity using the Theory of Constraints (TOC), waiting line theory, and Little’s Law. These advanced perspectives help us understand how capacity behaves across a supply chain, how higher resource levels drive down waiting times, and the relationship between inventory, throughput times, and throughput rates.
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MANAGING QUALITY

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As an area of intense business interest, quality is here to stay. Operations and supply chain personnel in particular need to be familiar with the major quality topic areas, including the different philosophical perspectives on quality and the tools used to manage quality levels on a day-to-day basis. In this chapter, we gave you a solid introduction to quality topics, ranging from high-level discussions of quality issues to detailed descriptions of tools and techniques. We started by defining quality and describing a total cost of quality model. We then presented an overview of total quality management (TQM), as well as a section on statistical quality control (SQC). We ended the chapter with a discussion of how organizations manage quality across the supply chain and some of the issues they face. We encourage you not to let your quality education end here. The American Society for Quality ( www.asq.org ), the Juran Institute ( www.juran.com ), the W. Edwards Deming Institute ( www....
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BUSINESS PROCESS

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Although the term business processes has been in the management lexicon for years, not all organizations clearly understand the importance of business processes and their effects on operations and supply chain performance. In this chapter, we defined the concept of business processes and showed how the business process perspective is different from the traditional, functionally oriented view of business. Business processes change the focus from “How is the business organized?” to “What does the business do?” Fortunately, practitioners and theorists continue to develop various tools and approaches for managing business processes. In this chapter, we described two process mapping approaches and demonstrated how they can be used. We also spent considerable time talking about various approaches to managing and improving business processes, including performance measurement and benchmarking, the Six Sigma methodology, and continuous improvement tools. We concluded the chapter with a discu...
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