4 Types of Business Operations

John Spacey, updated on March 28, 2024

Operations are the primary value creating processes of an organization. These are processes that directly create products, services or other value that you offer such as customer experiences. Anything detached from direct value creation such as human resources is not considered operations. Operations has four main areas as follows.

Production Management

The process of creating the value offered by an organization such as products and services. This is focused monitoring, controlling, measuring, optimizing and continually improving core processes.

Service Delivery

The process of providing services to customers and internal business units. Often governed by a set of performance targets such as those set forth in a service level agreement (SLA).

Supply Chain Management

The process of managing both supply and your fulfillment and delivery of orders to customers. This is viewed as a supply chain that flows from suppliers to your warehouses and production facilities and then to your customers.

Quality Assurance

Quality assurance is the top level process of ensuring quality across an organization including the quality of processes, designs, supply, products and services.

Summary

Operations are the core value generating processes of an organization that directly produce products and services. This has four main areas known as production, service delivery, supply chain management and quality assurance.