Contingent Decision Making Processes in Operations Management

An operating system utilises resources to transform or convert inputs into outputs in the form of goods or services. Conventionally operations management is defined as the task of designing, establishing, planning, running, controlling, maintaining and improving such systems. The identification of both goods and services as the output of such systems establishes operations management as a field of activity somewhat broader than production (or manufacturing) management which rests solely with the provision of goods or artefacts. However the distinction between goods and services is unclear and the latter category is broad and heterogeneous. It may therefore be worthwhile to have a more detailed definition, e.g. as follows — “An operating system is a combination of resources combined for the purpose of manufacture, transport, supply and service”; where these four functions are defined as below: