Within the context of the particular course a general introduction into Operations Management, which is a significant scientific sector in the Management Science, is first presented.  This sector exhibits a broad scope of applications in the contemporary business environment, since it refers to all current operations that are required for producing various products and providing a variety of services by any type of organization, from large to small, for profit and for non-profit ones, as well as for both the manufacturing and service sectors. Management of their operations constitutes a challenge in this new era of intense socioeconomic changes. Various technological and environmental challenges, increasing globalization, complex requirements in information and knowledge management, as well as the increasing significance of social responsibility bring operations managers in to the frontline of the required efforts to explore and resolve pertinent issues at an operational and tactical level, as well as within the operations contribution to the organization’s strategic objectives.

In particular, the objective of this course is the understanding of - and familiarization with - the concepts, methods, tools, practices and technique used in Operations Management, as well as with their applications in a broad range of business processes (such as in new products and processes R&D, inventory management, capacity selection, etc.). Emphasis is given in operational and structural changes that have been conducted in business lately and call for integrated efforts that are conceptually and strategically oriented to address operations management issues.