This text provides a balanced introduction to production operations management, combining managerial issues with technical tools and quantitative applications, and emphasizing practical applications in actual organizations throughout the text. This edition emphasizes quality, international issues, competitiveness, and service organizations. The author, an examiner for the Baldrige National Quality Award, integrates core concepts underlying award criteria throughout the text. New chapters address the scope of performance measurement in operations as well as fundamental issues of quality control and process improvement. Other new or expanded material on quality and manufacturing in strategic planning, quality function deployment, teamwork, push and pull distribution systems, and constraint management aims to assure complete, timely coverage. Quantitative chapters now include a section of solved problems for better understanding of techniques. Flexible organization allows instructors to either focus on broad managerial issues of POM or emphasize quantitative techniques and management-science applications.