Focused Operations Management: Achieving More with Existing Resources

Preface vii

Acknowledgments xi

About the Authors xiii

Part I: The Dynamic Management Environment

Chapter 1. The Modern Business Environment 3

Chapter 2. Principles of Management in the Dynamic Environment 11

Chapter 3. The Pareto Rule, the Focusing Table, and the Focusing Matrix 27

Part II: New Approaches in Management

Chapter 4. Managing the System by Its Constraints 43

Chapter 5. Management by Constraints in a Bottleneck Environment 71

Chapter 6. Managing by Constraints When the Market Is the Constraint 95

Chapter 7. Focused Current Reality Tree 115

Chapter 8. Resolving Managerial Conflicts 127

Chapter 9. The Efficiencies Syndrome 137

Chapter 10. Evils of Long Response Times 143

Chapter 11. Reducing Response Times 157

Chapter 12. The Complete Kit Concept 187

Chapter 13. Performance Measures and Managerial Control 201

Chapter 14. The Effects of Fluctuations, Variability, and Uncertainty on the System 215

Chapter 15. Evils of Traditional Cost Accounting 233

Chapter 16. Marketing, Costing, and Pricing Considerations in Decision-Making Processes 241

Chapter 17. Quality Management and Process Control 261

Part III: Strategy and Value Creation

Chapter 18. Strategy, Positioning, and Focusing 281

Chapter 19. Value Creation 307

Part IV: Applying the Focused Management Approach

Chapter 20. Value-Focused Project Management 345

Chapter 21. Managing Research and Development 369

Chapter 22. The Focused Management Approach in Logistics 395

Part V: Perspective and Implementation

Chapter 23. Our Managerial Credo 421

References 435

Recommended Readings 439

Index 441