Building Intuition: Insights from Basic Operations Management Models and Principles

by Dilip Chhajed (Editor), Timothy J. Lowe (Editor)

This is the first book in the field that uses the power of the basic models and principles to provide students and managers with an "intuitive understanding" of operations management. The book touches on nine fundamental models and principles, and outlines the key insights behind each one. Some of the very biggest names in the Management Science field have developed and carefully written these chapters on the field’s basic models.

200 pages, Paperback

First published July 24, 2008

Reviews

[Руслан · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very affordable introduction into math behind important business decision-making: queueing, staffing, stock sizing, risk pooling... Book is quite short (<200p), and focus on gaining insights and intuition, rather than mathematical rigor. But there is not only hand-waving -- there are enough formulas, they just kept simple enough to catch the essence.

There are many examples, and authors not only describe the simplest case, but also spent much on questions like "how robust is that solution?", "will it ever work/brings enough profit in practice"? or "do we ever/under which circumstances need more complex procedures?" -- which I appreciate very much.

The only con I see is: sometimes there are too many words for something simple. E.g. I can recall 1.5 pages on finding minimum of a simple function, while everybody STEM-related could do it in ~30 seconds in its head. It is not happens often though, so not a big con.