Written for graduate level (MBA) courses in Operations Management, this brief book focuses on only the 'essential' core concepts in operations. This book takes the novel approach that operations management is the design and management of business processes and uses this process view as the unifying theme to study these core concepts.*The core concepts are discussed in three steps: 1) first model and understand the process and its flows, 2) then study causal relationships between process structure and certain performance metrics, and 3) formulate implications for managerial actions by filtering out managerial levers ('process drivers') and their impact on process performance*The objective of this book is to show that managers can control process structure and process drivers to achieve desired business process performance*Uses a process view as the unifying paradigm to focus on the essence of operations