Operations, Strategy, and Technology: Pursuing the Competitive Edge

Operations, Strategy, and Technology: Pursuing the Competitive Edge

A round-up of some of the best book reviews recently published by Emerald.Operations, Strategy, and Technology: Pursuing the Competitive Edge

This thought provoking book serves as a challenge to those of us who work, teach and write in operations management to think about how the subject has changed and is continuing to change, and to consider how our approach to the subject should also evolve to fit with the needs of what the authors term “The New Economy.” The publishers describe the book as “the long awaited follow-up to the highly successful classic Restoring our Competitive Edge.” The four authors, all faculty members of Harvard Business School, have a long and distinguished history in writing in the area of operations strategy.

The book begins with a review of the way in which regional economies have failed to deliver the sustained growth predicted by many analysts. The authors demonstrate how this lack of growth has coincided with the growing disillusionment of operations managers as they have tried, with mixed success, to implement what the writers describe as NOAs – New Approaches to Operations. Although initiatives such as total quality management (TQM), just-in-time scheduling (JIT) and quality function deployment (QFD) have promised to deliver perfect solutions, many studies of such programmes suggest the promised improvements failed to materialise. The authors imply that much of this lack of success results from a tendency of organizations to emulate “best practice” slavishly, rather than to devise specific strategies that best fit the actual context in which they operate.

The book is divided into three broad themes. The first part considers the operations strategy and structure of an organization. Factors that include capacity, to what extent organizations outsource or vertically integrate, and managing operations with a network environment are covered. The second section considers how to manage operations technologies and, in particular, the issues around appropriate use of information technology, making capital investment decisions and how to select appropriate “project portfolios.” Finally, the last two chapters focus on operations improvement, considering how to both encourage and manage sustainable improvements. Throughout the text there is an emphasis on there being no “one best way.” Rather, managers have to make appropriate decisions to fit with the context within which an organization operates. The book ends by asserting that companies which achieve sustained high performance owe this to the skill of their operational managers rather than other factors.

Numerous examples are given throughout the text to illustrate the ideas presented. One criticism of these from an international audience is the heavy reliance on case studies from the US. A potentially more serious criticism is that, despite the recognition within the text that the “New Economy” is dominated by service industries, the majority of examples cited are drawn from manufacturing organizations. These apart, there is excellent material for both teachers and practitioners of operations management. One refreshing factor is the emphasis on the operations of an organization as the source of what the authors term “competitive edge” rather than as a function that reacts to changes in the outside world.

This is a book I would recommend to those who have to manage operations or to those who have to interact with operations managers. It provides a helpful antidote to the notion that implementing the latest fad will cause all the problems to disappear. It would also be appropriate as further reading for MBA students who wish to deepen their understanding of effective management of operations.

A version of this review was originally published in the International Journal of Operations & Production Management, Volume 26 Number 2, 2006.

R. Hayes, G. Pisano, D. Upton, S. Wheelwright,John Wiley and Sons, 2004