ABSTRACT
Operations Management (OM) consulting is often overlooked in today's discussions about what is "hot" in professional services and management consulting; instead, more attention is paid in the media and at business schools to the romance and rewards of strategy consulting, closely followed by IT consulting. The 1970s and 1980s saw a broader and more holistic view emerge of operations management, mainly through the widespread application of Materials Requirements Planning (MRP), Just-in-Time (JIT), and Total Quality Management (TQM) systems. Today's operations consultants need to be armed with fundamental ideas that are the bedrock of sound practices in operations management. The following concepts are widely used to illuminate operational issues, be they in the United States or other parts of the world. The general history of TQM is well known: Its renaissance began in Japan with the auto industry, and it spread to the United States at the urging of the quality gurus—Deming, Juran, and Crosby.
