This book in about methods to effectively produce and distribute the goods and services sold by a company. To develop a better understanding of the field, this book is organized into four major sections: Operations Strategy and Managing Change, Process Selection and Design, Supply Chain Design, and Planning and Controlling the Supply Chain. In the following, we quickly describe the major topics in the book.
       Strategy is an important and recurring topic in the book. Any company must have a comprehensive business plan that is supported by a marketing strategy, operations strategy, and financial strategy. It is essential for a company to ensure that the three strategies support each other. Strategy is covered from a high-level view in Chapter 2 (Operations Strategy and Competitiveness) and more details are covered in three chapter: Chapter 10 (Supply Chain Strategy), Chapter 11 (Strategic Capacity Management), and Chapter 12 (Lean production). Our reason for spreading the strategy material throughout the book is to make things a bit more interesting. In general, we try to give you the "big picture" and then fill in the details with following chapters.

- Section One: Operations Strategy and Managing Change
- Section Two: Process Selection and Design
- Section Three: Supply Chain Design
- Section Four: Planning and Controlling the Supply Chain