CENTRE FOR GRADUATE STUDIES: Operations Management

National culture has received a substantial amount of interest in the operations management literature. We present the first structured review of articles studying national culture in operations management. Our search returned 51 papers published in ten leading journals between 2000 and 2017. We sort and analyse the papers according to three focus areas of operations management (strategy, execution and improvement). We also analyse the papers according to whether they address the relevance of national culture, the impact of national culture or the actions managers can use to manage or mitigate the effects of national culture.

We assess the current state of empirical research in operations and supply chain management (OSM), using Dickens' contrast between the best of times and the worst of times as a frame. The best of times refers to the future that empirical OSM research is now entering, with exciting opportunities available using big data and other new data sources, new empirical approaches and analytical techniques and innovative tools for developing theory. These are well aligned with new research questions related to the digital economy, Industry 4.0, the impact of the millennial generation as consumers, social media, 3D printing, etc. However, we also explore how it is the worst of times, focusing on the challenges and problems that plague empirical OSM research.

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to present a new approach of Airlines Flight Operations Management System adaptation to functioning in incomplete information conditions. Methods: The article describes two runtime methods which increase the adaptation degree of Airlines Flight Operations Management System to functioning in incomplete information conditions, such as: exception handling and Quality of Service management. Results: The Airlines Flight Operations Management System adaptation overall architecture is given and their components relationships are described. Discussion: The proposed new approach will allow to adapt the Airlines Flight Operations Management Systems' architecture to functioning in a high degree of uncertainty and incomplete information conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media data contain rich information in posts or comments written by customers. If those data can be extracted and analysed properly, companies can fully utilise this rich source of information. They can then convert the data to useful information or knowledge, which can help to formulate their business strategy. This cannot only facilitate marketing research in view of customer behaviour, but can also aid other management disciplines. Operations management (OM) research and practice with the objective to make decisions on product and process design is a fine example. Nevertheless, this line of thought is under-researched. In this connection, this paper explores the role of social media data in OM research. A structured approach is proposed, which involves the analysis of social media comments and a statistical cluster analysis to identify the interrelationships amongst important factors. A real-life example is employed to demonstrate the concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The department structure at the Journal of Operations Management (JOM) has evolved since its creation in 2016 (Browning & de Treville, 2018; Guide Jr & Ketokivi, 2015b). Part of this evolution was the creation of a department for Innovation and Project Management (IPM) in May of 2019. Although the department is a recent addition, JOM has published papers on the topics of innovation and project management (PM) since its founding in 1980.....

Time passes quickly when you are having fun. In January 2012, we accepted the responsibility to be the new editorsin-chief of Operations Management Research (OMR). The journal was established in 2008 with Jack Meredith and Patrick McMullen as editors-in-chief (Meredith and McMullen 2008). With a specific focus on bringing practice and theory together, OMR has managed to position itself well among the operations management journals, promoting research that is relevant to both practitioners and researchers....

Today project management is an important function and project management skills are valued highly. To cater to this need business schools offer degrees, courses, and certificates in project management. It is a core topic in operations management courses and most textbooks devote a chapter to it. For most undergraduate students their one and only exposure to this important issue comes in an introductory operations management course. This paper reviews the typical instructional approach to project management in an operations course and finds it outdated. Suggestions are offered that will help make it more relevant to the project management world that students will encounter today....

Supply diversification or multiple sourcing has been demonstrated to be an effective strategy for firms to ward against potential supply disruptions due to natural disasters, random yields, quality issues, delivery uncertainties, supplier bankruptcies, etc.....

This thesis focuses on the design and analysis of discrete-event stochastic simulations involving correlated inputs, input modeling for stochastic simulations, and application of OM/OR
techniques to the operations of food banks. This thesis contributes to the stochastic simulation theory by describing how to jointly represent stochastic and parameter uncertainties
in stochastic simulations with correlated inputs, and decompose the variance of the simulation output into terms related to stochastic uncertainty and parameter uncertainty.....