The material delivers “rigor and relevance” while always focusing on “real operations, real simple”. Content is timely in large part because this book will not be an updated version of a text
written 20-30 years ago. Consider how much the world of operations has changed over the last 30 years, from the explosion of the Internet, the dominance of services and the rise of China.
The book is divided into parts and each part has multiple chapters. The first chapter in each part is written without any technical math. The goal of this chapter is to provide the major
ideas contained within the part in a manner accessible to anyone, from a busy CEO, to an undergraduate student who knows nothing about statistics or balance sheets. The remaining chapters
within each part include the math tools that are the focus of many exam questions. Furthermore, the complexity of math increases as the reader advances through the book. For example, knowledge
of statistics is needed only in the later parts.