About the Book

Help Students Get Extra Practice

• 5 Video Case Studies featuring Alaska Airlines examines the quality program at Alaska Air (Chapter 6); the process analysis behind the airline’s 20-minute baggage retrieval guarantee (Chapter 7); how Alaska empowers its employees (Chapter 10); the airline’s use of lean, 5s, kaizen, and Gemba (Chapter 16); and the complexities of scheduling (Module B), helping students see concepts in action in the real world.

• Hundreds of new, challenging problems. Using the 1, 2, 3, 4-dot system to distinguish level of difficulty for each problem (1 being the easiest and 4 the most difficult), this text provides even more opportunity for students to challenge their knowledge and enhance their skills. The hundreds of new problems found in this edition also allow professors additional options when it comes to assigning homework based on a difficulty-level that’s appropriate for their students.
• Problem-solving Software: POM for Windows and Microsoft^® Excel OM helps students enhance their problem-solving skills. The following software programs are available on the text’s Companion Website, www.pearsonhighered.com/heizer and myomlab:
  • POM for Windows software is a powerful tool for easily solving OM problems. Its 24 modules can be used to solve most of the homework problems in the text.
  • Microsoft Excel OM is the Heizer/Render/Munson exclusive, user-friendly Excel add-in. Excel OM automatically creates worksheets to model and solve problems. Users select a topic from the pull-down menu, fill in the data, and then Excel will display and graph (where appropriate) the results. This software is great for student homework, what-if analysis, or classroom demonstrations.
  • Now numerous examples are included in Chapters 1, 2, 4, 8, 12, and 13; Supplements 6 and 7; and Modules A, B, and F on how students can develop their own Excel spreadsheet models to tackle OM issues, helping them to expand their spreadsheet capabilities.

New Additions by Chapter

• UPDATED! Chapter 1: Table 1.4 now reflects employment in various sectors and expands discussion of Lean operations. There is a new case on Uber Technologies, which introduces productivity by discussing the disruptive nature of the Uber business model. In addition, there is a new “Create your own Excel spreadsheet” for both labor productivity and multifactor productivity.
• UPDATED! Chapter 2: Revised Figures better reflect changes in the growth of world trade (2.1) and product life cycle changes (2.5). The Minute Lube case has been revised as Rapid Lube, and example 1 on National Architects has been expanded to clarify factor rating calculations and is also demonstrated with a “Create your own Excel spreadsheet.”
• UPDATED! Chapter 3: The Bechtel Global Company Profile has been updated. There’s also a new section on well-defined projects with the “agile” and “waterfall” approaches, and 2 new OM in Action boxes: “Agile Project Management at Mastek” and “Behind the Tour de France.”
• Chapter 4: A new table compares the MAD, MSE, and MAPE forecasting errors; and a new “NYC’s Potholes and Regression Analysis” OM in Action box is included.
• REVISED! Chapter 5: A new section on concurrent engineering, and 2 new discussion questions have been added. Solved Problem 5.1 has been revised.
• Supplement 5: There is a new introductory section on Corporate Social Responsibility, “Blue Jeans and Sustainability” OM in Action box, and 10 new homework problems.
• Chapter 6: New material on Taguchi’s quality loss function, a section on SE