Book excerpt: Essentials of Operations Management is a brand new concise version of the market-leading text Operations Management. It has been developed forstudents on short courses in operations management – for example, doing an initial course at undergraduate, postgraduate or post-experience level. In these books the author team have set the standards in Operations Management which other textbooks seek to emulate: Expert authorship, an engaging writing style, and an interesting collection of cases combine to communicate the importance of managing operations and processes within a successful organisation.