Operations Strategy: Principles and Practice provides a unified framework for operations strategy. The book shows how to tailor the operational system to maximize value and competitive advantage. Conceptual thinking and financial optimization yield guidelines for implementation. This dual emphasis on principles and practice is reflected by analytical models that are illustrated with detailed examples and a dozen case studies of real business situations. The book uses three complementary views of operations--the competency, resource, and process view--and contains integrating case studies. Consequently, the book has four parts: * Part 1 describes the concept of operations strategy and illustrates how trade-offs among operational competencies (such as cost, quality, responsiveness, and flexibility) can provide competitive advantage. * Part 2 introduces the resource view and shows how to tailor real assets to business strategy. Four chapters analyze four important resource decisions: sizing (how much capacity is appropriate?), timing (when to expand or contract?), type (what kind of flexibility is needed?), and location (where do we place assets in a global network?) * Part 3 considers the process view and shows how to tailoring activity networks to business strategy. Four chapters analyze four important processes in any operation: strategic sourcing (managing inputs), demand and revenue management (managing outputs), risk management and operational hedging, and improvement and innovation management (preparing for the future). * Part 4 presents three business cases that integrate various elements of the book. The Harley-Davidson case investigates the four resource decisions, the Seagate Technology case studies operational hedging, and the Peapod case illustrates demand and revenue management and mass customized services. * "This book provides a new pedagogical foundation for courses in Operations Strategy, by developing key concepts through analytical models and intuition within a coherent framework. Professor Van Mieghem seemlessly integrates basic knowledge in the area with the latest academic research, and his own business cases. The result is a truly outstanding book that chronicles the frontier of thought in the area." Professor Dan Adelman, The University of Chicago Graduate School of Business * "This textbook provides a seminal contribution to the teaching of operations strategy in the MBA curriculum. Thoughtful discussions of fundamental strategic choices , facing the twenty first century global enterprise, are artfully combined with insightful analytical models." Professor Awi Federgruen, Graduate School of Business, Columbia University * "This is an impressive book that provides a totally new perspective on operations strategy and how to teach it. The author Jan Van Mieghem does a marvelous job at developing a model-based framework for understanding operations strategy; the book draws heavily on operations management research to extract principles for operations strategy and then demonstrates how these principles guide and apply to practice through illuminating real-world examples and cases. This is an outstanding contribution for our community and our students." Professor Stephen C. Graves, MIT * "Van Mieghem's book shows us forcefully and insightfully how companies can structure their operations strategy to build overall business values. It is such a beautiful and complete treatment that it is a book for all operations managers and students, as well as for practitioners in all functional areas." Professor Hau Lee, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University * "Many firms adapt product strategy to changing markets but keep operational processes unchanged. This book provides a novel, integrated, yet easily accessible approach to link operations with the strategic view of the CEO. Highly recommended." Professor Nils Rudi, INSEAD * "Operations Strategy does an excellent job in providing a non-overwhelming description of the underlying theory and then illustrating it with case studies and examples. The book contains many fascinating topics which are simply not covered elsewhere: capacity timing, capacity flexibility and operational hedging, to name just a few. Students, practitioners and academics alike will appreciate the easy-going approach of the book and a wealth of managerial insights that it offers." Professor Serguei Netessine, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania * "Insightful and fun! Van Mieghem has done a masterful job of covering the important issues in operations strategy in a structured and engaging manner. This book introduces each topic in a separate chapter with a current example from a well-known company or industry, and wraps up each chapter with a more detailed case study after reviewing the relevant concepts in depth. Any instructor who plans to teach a course on operations strategy, should consider u