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Operations & Information Management

THE OIM DEPARTMENT

Operations Management

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The "Operations and Information Management (OIM)" Department offers a major in "Operations Management (OM)".  This major is concerned with the effective management of the conversion process involved in transforming inputs into desired products and services.
 
 
During the 1970s, major segments of American Industry, once dominant in world markets, experienced dramatic declines.  Why has the United States lost much of its domestic market for products originally invented and developed here?  The decline in productivity growth is often cited as a major cause.  After World War II, other nations, especially Japan and Germany, began focusing their attention on long term quality, manufacturing processes, and continuing programs of operational improvement.  The Japanese committed themselves to the development of technologies and operations systems that result in products with low cost, high quality, and high reliability.  This practice gave them a significant competitive advantage in the market places of the world.  In the late 1980s, after losing millions of customers, U.S. companies started focusing on improving quality, reliability, productivity, and manufacturing flexibility.
 
Operations Management is concerned with all of these factors.  It is one of the core functional areas of an organization and has a significant impact on the success and survival of the organization.  In this age of fierce international competition, firms have to provide products/services of superior quality at affordable prices.  Otherwise, firms will not succeed. The primary goal of the OM major is to impart the necessary management science techniques so that OM departments can effectively deliver quality products at the lowest possible cost.

Electronic Commerce

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is an emerging business environment that automates and coordinates critical business processes between an organization and its suppliers, trading partners and customers through the extensive use of computers and communication technologies, computerized data and secured World Wide Web. 

Some of the critical processes are buying and selling of products and services, order taking and credit processing, fulfillment and payment, order status tracking and customer support services.  The technologies to be studied are:  computers, software, databases, telecommunications, the Internet, and the World Wide Web among others.  The capabilities of these technologies to support business activities with their long and short-term costs, risks and other business implications are emphasized.

 
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