From operations management to project management

The future enterprise will be characterised by a focus on total quality, globalisation, and a business process oriented approach. The globalisation will lead to the “virtual enterprise”, which again will obtain a competitive position by defining and re-engineering its business processesVarious business operation strategies such as lean manufacturing, globalisation, process orientation, etc. have cost, market, organisation or business as focus areas. To operate business by projects is a business operation strategy starting to replace traditional operations based strategies.There are similarities and differences between operations management and project management. Operations management structures the work by means of a bill of material, whilst project management uses a work breakdown structure (WBS). Scheduling and loading is more resource oriented in operations management whilst in project management it is more activity oriented. The project model is quite rapidly finding wider application, also in repetitive production.Some of the future challenges in project management are to simplify project planning and control, to better apply information technology and to integrate with the engineering management system.