The job market continues to change. Highly skilled and specialized workers are in demand. Traditional education cannot meet all the needs to create specialty skill workers. Certification provides up-to-date training and development while promoting individual or professional skills and knowledge in a focused manner. Certification as a way of continuing professional eduction can also be more cost effective.

The Encyclopedia of Production and Manufacturing Management is an encyclopedia that has been developed to serve this field as the fundamental reference work. Over the past twenty years, the field of production and operations management has grown more rapidly than ever and consequently its boundaries have been stretched in all directions. For example, in the last two decades, production and manufacturing management absorbed in rapid succession several new production management concepts: manufacturing strategy, focused factory, just-in-time manufacturing, concurrent engineering, total quality management, supply chain management, flexible manufacturing systems, lean production, and mass customization, to name a few. This explosive growth makes the need for this volume abundantly clear. The manufacturing industry thinks and acts more broadly than it did several decades ago. The most notable change has been the need for manufacturing managers to think in technological, strategic and competitive terms. This is a very favorable development, and it leads to manufacturing success. The entries in this encyclopedia include the most recent technical and strategic innovations in production and manufacturing management. The encyclopedia consists of articles of varying lengths. The longer articles on important concepts and practices range from five to fifteen pages. There are about 100 such articles written by nearly 100 authors from around the world. In addition, there are over 1000 shorter entries on concepts, practices and principles. The range of topics and depth of coverage is intended to suit both student and professional audiences. The shorter entries provide digests of unfamiliar and complicated subjects. Difficult subjects are made intelligible to the reader without oversimplification. The strategic and technological perspectives on various topics give this Encyclopedia its distinctiveness and uniqueness. The world of manufacturing today is increasingly competitive. It is apparent that manufacturers must respond to these competitive pressures with technical and strategic innovation. This encyclopedia has been developed to help researchers, students and those in the manufacturing industry to understand and implement these ongoing changes in the field.

Purchasing and Supply Management includes the latest management, procurement, and negotiation techniques and the authors have taken great care to integrate the impact of global commerce on the buyers job. Historically, purchasing evolved as a weak part of manufacturing, gained its independence, and expanded to a financial contributer to a company's success. A major challenge of the buying job is to manage supply management. To do this, the buyer must know and use the full range of techniques and procedures available to the true professional. This book is dedicated to these functions of supply and all they entail.

Includes a list of members.