Activities in operations management (OM) include organizing work, selecting processes, arranging layouts, locating facilities, designing jobs, measuring performance, controlling quality, scheduling work, managing inventory, and planning production. Operations manag- ers deal with people, technology, and deadlines. These managers need good technical, con- ceptual, and behavioral skills. Their activities are closely intertwined with other functional areas of a firm. The four primary functional areas of a firm are marketing, finance, operations, and human resources. As shown in Figure 1.2, for most firms, operations is the technical core or "hub" of the organization, interacting with the other functional areas and suppliers to pro- duce goods and provide services for customers. For example, to obtain monetary resources for production, operations provides finance and accounting with production and inventory data, g capital budgeting requests, and capacity expansion and technology plans. Fi