Guest Editorial: Reflections on the past, present and future of operations management

Abstract

1 IntroductionAt any of our professional meetings it seems that one of themain topics of conversation at hallway meetings, coffeebreaks, or cocktail receptions is the present state ofoperations management (OM) and its future. Much thesame can be said about our academic institutions wheresuch conversations often reach even into the offices ofDeans, particularly as resource allocation decisions arebeing made. Having recently retired from a 40 yearacademic career (including Washington University, Univer-sity of Missouri—St. Louis, Arizona State University andthe University of South Carolina) I can tell you that suchconversations have been prominent for a long time and willlikely persist into the future. Such discussions are not onlyinteresting, but also have value in that they help focus onwhat is important in achieving greater stature for ouracademic field.This commentary is intended to be a reflection on myperspective on the past, present, and future of operationsmanagement based on my academic career. As I write thiscommentary I do so with a degree of humility in the hopethat I will not appear to be a total “dinosaur”. In this regardlet me initially suggest that operations managementencompasses a wide variety of intellectual pursuits. Thus,my biases as to what should be emphasized in OM reflectbut one of these many perspectives. Additionally, I writefrom the viewpoint of both teaching and research since Ibelieve that the two are inextricably intertwined.2 The pastWhen I began my doctoral studies at Washington Univer-sity in 1966, operations management was basically acombination of factory management and industrial engi-neering. Indeed, I can recall doing stopwatch time andmotion studies using films of lathe and drill press operators,under the direction of Professor Powell Niland, who wasHarvard trained and a wonderful teacher. Coincident at thattime was the rapid development of operations research/management science (OR/MS), which found particularapplicability to OM. Advocated and given strong impetusby the famous Gordon and Howell (1959) and Pierson(1959) reports, OR/MS essentially revolutionized the fieldof OM. These two reports questioned the rigor of businessschool curricula, and suggested that a much greaterquantitative and analytical emphasis was needed. Opera-tions research/management science provided this analyticalemphasis and held the promise of finding “optimal”solutions to many familiar OM problems such as produc-tion planning and scheduling, facility location, inventorycontrol, logistics system design, and lot scheduling. In fact,I found that my doctoral studies consisted of a large numberof applied mathematics, statistics, and OR/MS coursesaccompanied by a few traditional OM courses The newmethods of analysis that were part of this academicrevolution were greatly aided by the rapid developmentand power of digital computers. In many ways this era wasthe “perfect storm” for the associated rapid developmentand institutionalization of quantitatively oriented OM inbusiness schools.In my early years in academe, I taught both OR/MS andOM courses plus courses in statistics and on occasion acomputer programming or information systems course.Most of my early research was done in the “living