Operations Management: Improving Customer Service

Knod and Schonberger have written the best general text available on production/operations management at the undergraduate level.The text has very good chapters on Capacity Planning(aggregate capacity planning),Scheduling,Design(reliability and serviceability),Quality and process control(especially pp.318-322 on mean and range charts and pp.327-330 on process capability analysis),Inventory control,Timing(waiting lines and queues),and PERT.A minor weakness is that a discussion of the use of the Beta distribution in PERT analysis is omitted from the book.Anyone who covers this book throughly will be very well prepared to take senior level undergraduate courses and graduate level courses in operations management.

Fairly good survey book. Having an undergrad operations background, I found this book mirrored the strengths and weaknesses of a more detailed operations curriculum. Book is best in framework and quantitative model overviews, weaker on softer subjects like staffing, project management, & holistic quality.