How Readers Can Use this Encyclopedia

Most students, instructors, and managers struggle to build a simple framework for the supply chain and operations management discipline. Although most standard texts offer some type of framework, none of these frameworks has been widely accepted. The SCOR framework has gained wide acceptance for supply chain management, but less so for operations management. (See the SCOR entry.) This author helped create an award-winning framework published in Hays, Bouzdine-Chameeva, Meyer Goldstein, Hill, and Scavarda (2007). (See the operations management entry.) More recently, this author developed the much simpler “Better-Faster-Cheaper-Stronger” framework that is based on the following four fundamental premises:

Premise 1: All work is a process.
Premise 2: All processes can be improved.
Premise 3: Processes are improved by making them better, faster, cheaper, and stronger.
Premise 4: Improved processes add more value to customers, shareholders, employees, and society.

Better processes create products and services that more reliably meet customer requirements for both tangible and intangible product attributes. Faster processes require less time and provide more customization. Cheaper processes reduce cost by achieving a better balance between supply and demand and by improving the product and service design. Stronger processes are better aligned with higher-level strategies, are more sustainable, and better mitigate risks. This framework has a logical order. We start with customer requirements for performance and reliability (better); then we reduce cycle time for both standard and customized products by reducing non-value added activities (faster); then we reduce cost by balancing supply and demand and improving product design (cheaper); and finally we make sure that our processes are aligned with our strategic intent, sustainability goals, and safety requirements (stronger). It is important to select a limited set of balanced metrics to support organizational efforts to make processes better, faster, cheaper, and stronger. Note that this framework is consistent with the sand cone model developed by Ferdows and De Meyer (1990).

In this author’s experience, students and managers enthusiastically embrace the four premises and quickly become passionate about making their processes (and lives) better, faster, cheaper, and stronger. This framework is simple, compelling, easy to remember, and easy to apply to any process in any business function (e.g., marketing, sales, finance, MIS, HR, accounting, operations, logistics) in any organizational context (e.g., healthcare, government, education, not-for-profits, distribution, retailing, transportation, and manufacturing).

This Encyclopedia of Operations Management can help you quickly develop a complete mental map of the entire supply chain and operations management discipline – and help you learn how to make your processes better, faster, cheaper, and stronger. Start by studying the bulleted topics in the framework below. Then follow the links at the end of each entry to the related entries to master the entire subject. Also, make sure you have a clear understanding of the performance metrics needed to support each of the four dimensions. Pay particular attention to the essential terms marked with a star () at the end of the short definition and listed in this preface.