This book represents our view of the essential body of knowledge for an introductory operationsmanagement course. It has been successfully used with all types of students, fromfreshmen taking an introductory course in operations management, to MBAs, to executiveMBAs, and even PhD students.Our guiding principle in the development of Matching Supply with Demand has been“real operations, real solutions.” “Real operations” means that most of the chapters in thisbook are written from the perspective of a specific company so that the material in thistext will come to life by discussing it in a real-world context. Companies and products aresimply easier to remember than numbers and equations. We have chosen a wide varietyof companies, small and large, representing services, manufacturing, and retailing alike.While obviously not fully representative, we believe that—taken together—these casesprovide a realistic picture of operations management problems today.