Information for Students

Operations Management Major
Operations Management is the management of business processes, that is, the management of the recurring activities of a firm. Along with finance and marketing, operations is one of the three primary functions of a firm. At the danger of being simplistic, one may say that marketing induces the demand for products (goods and services), finance provides the capital, and operations produces and delivers the product. Even more generally, operations spans the entire organization: COOs are in charge of R&D, design/engineering, production operations, marketing, sales, support and service.

Career Paths
The operations major is designed with two specific career paths in mind: consulting and general management. Operations is arguably the most appropriate major for a consultant or general manager to learn about the daily cross-functional management of the firm. All operations electives in the operations major take an interdisciplinary view and interface with finance (for investing and financial evaluation), marketing (appropriate delivery channels and customer management), organizational behavior and strategy. Instead of the technical engineering view of operations, the focus is on managing the business well.