Lee Iacocca said “in the end, all business operations can be reduced to three words: people, product, and profits.”
If you asked someone to define “operations”, what answers would you get? Probably statements ranging from “processes” to “getting stuff done” or “I’m not sure.”
Business books may define it as the tasks that produce the products or services a business sells to customers. That’s not a bad answer, but it isn’t as succinct as Mr. Iococca and it doesn’t capture the whole of how I view operations.
For me, operation is the “collection of all activities required to keep the business running.” That’s not entirely different from the general business definition above, but don’t stop there.
Operations has a purpose: to extract value from the resources of the organization.
Putting it all together, operations is the collection of activities that businesses perform to get the most of out their raw materials, processes, people, and capital in order to provide goods and services.
If that is correct, operations should focus on efficiently using the highest and best purpose of all resources while eliminating waste, ineffectiveness, low performing resources, and low value products. Conversely, if operations are efficient, every person, every role, every tool, and every process have value to the organization. And wouldn’t that be a great place for your business to be?
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https://opalpg.com/2020/03/04/what-is-operations-anyway/
