2 a.m. on Mill Lane: Priti, the head baker, unlocks the Mill Lane bakehouse at 2 a.m. Six bakers follow her in. Valley Grain's flour is stacked by the mixers.
By 5 a.m. the two vans must leave with 1,200 loaves for the three shops and the cafés. Somebody has decided how much to bake, in what order, on which oven, and how good is good enough. That somebody is doing operations management.
In 1.1.1 you met the idea that every business turns inputs into outputs. Flour, people and ovens go in; loaves come out.
That turning is the transformation process. Running it well, night after night, is the job of operations management: planning, organising and controlling the process that turns inputs into goods and services.
Inputs
What Priti starts with
- Flour from Valley Grain, water, yeast and salt
- Priti and six bakers on the night shift
- The oven, the mixers and the bakehouse itself
Process
What operations runs
- Mix, shape, prove and bake
- Check every batch before it cools
- Load the vans in the order of the drops
Outputs
What leaves at 5 a.m.
- 1,200 loaves for three shops and the cafés
- On time, to the same standard as yesterday
What operations decides every night
How much
The shops and cafés send their orders. Operations turns them into one number: 1,200 loaves tonight.
With what
Enough flour in by the afternoon, and six bakers on the rota. Running short at 3 a.m. cannot be fixed at 3 a.m.
In what order
One oven bakes 600 loaves an hour, so 1,200 loaves need two hours of oven time. The first shop's bread goes in first.
How good
Priti checks every batch: colour, weight, shape. A loaf that fails does not go on the van.
By when
The vans leave at 5 a.m. Bread that is perfect at 5.30 is late.
Operations management, in one line: Operations management plans, organises and controls the process that turns inputs into outputs.
It is not only for factories. A bakehouse, a hospital and a delivery firm all have one.
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One burnt rack: One night a timer is missed and a rack of 50 loaves comes out black.
The flour, yeast and salt in them cost 50 × $0.90 = $45, and they go in the bin. The shops lose 50 × $3 = $150 of sales. The bakers' hour is paid for either way.
Priti does not judge the night by whether bread came out. She judges it by how well it came out. Operations management is measured on three things, and the burnt rack failed all three at once.
Efficient
- The most output from the fewest inputs
- No flour, oven time or baker's hour wasted
- The burnt rack used inputs and made nothing to sell
The right quality
- Every loaf meets the same standard: colour, weight, taste
- Customers come back because today's loaf is as good as yesterday's
- A burnt loaf that reached a shop would cost a customer
A low cost per loaf
- The cost of making each loaf, once flour, wages and energy are shared out
- Lower cost per loaf leaves more of the $3 price as profit
- Wasted loaves push the cost of every good loaf up
Efficiency and cost go together. A bakehouse that wastes less makes each good loaf more cheaply. Quality is the check on both: cheaper flour or a hotter, faster oven might cut the cost of a loaf and ruin it.
The three pull against each other: Faster is not always better. Baking at a higher heat to finish sooner saves oven time and burns more loaves.
Good operations management is the balance: as efficient and as cheap as possible without letting the loaf get worse.
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Ninety loaves an evening: Last year the three shops were left with about 90 unsold loaves every evening. Priti baked the same number every night, whatever the day.
Now each shop sends its order by 8 p.m., and she bakes to the orders. About 40 loaves are left, and they go to Second Helpings, the food charity, instead of the bin.
Running operations so that they use fewer resources and do less harm to the environment is making them more sustainable.
Look at what the change did. Fifty fewer loaves a day are baked for nobody. At $0.90 of ingredients each, that is 50 × $0.90 = $45 a day that no longer goes on flour for the bin. The greener choice was also the cheaper one.
| What Mill Lane does | Less harm | Lower cost? |
|---|---|---|
| Bakes to the shops' orders | Less food thrown away | Yes: less flour bought for loaves nobody buys |
| Fills the oven before firing it | Less energy for each loaf | Yes: a lower electricity bill |
| Buys flour from Valley Grain nearby | Shorter lorry journeys | Often: fresher flour, less delivery cost |
| Gives unsold bread to Second Helpings | Food eaten, not binned | No saving, but a good name in the town |
Sustainable and efficient are often the same move: Waste is an input paid for and never sold. Cutting it helps the planet and the profit at once.
Not always, though: paper bags that rot cost more than plastic ones. Then operations has to weigh the cost against the good it does.
A fourth shop: In September 2026 Lena's Bakery Ltd opens its fourth shop, on Station Road. The shop will need about 250 loaves a night.
For Priti that means 1,450 loaves instead of 1,200. The decision was made in a meeting about customers and money. It lands in the bakehouse at 2 a.m.
In 1.1.2 you saw that the four business functions depend on each other. Operations is where that shows most plainly.
It cannot choose alone what to make, who makes it, or how to pay for it. And every change it makes reaches the other three.
Marketing
- Tells operations what customers want and how many: 250 loaves for Station Road
- A price offer or a new loaf needs operations to make it first
- Must not promise what the bakehouse cannot bake by 5 a.m.
Human resources
- Finds and trains the bakers: Priti plus six on the night shift
- 250 more loaves means more shaping each night
- More hours, or a seventh baker, is a human resources decision
Finance
- Pays for the flour, which Valley Grain lets the bakery pay 30 days later
- Must find $45,000 for the second deck oven Lena is planning
- Uses the cost of each loaf to check that $3 still makes a profit
Now the oven. At 600 loaves an hour, 1,450 loaves take about two hours and 25 minutes of oven time instead of two. There is less room for a missed timer before the vans leave.
That is why the second oven is on the table, and why the decision is not Priti's alone: operations says what it needs, finance says whether the money is there.
When the links break: If marketing opens Station Road but finance has not agreed the bigger flour order, the bakers run short at 3 a.m.
If human resources has not added the hours, 1,450 loaves are shaped by people paid to shape 1,200. The plan fails in the bakehouse, but it was broken in the meeting.
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How this comes up: Short questions tied to a case. Define operations management, for two marks. State two things operations management tries to achieve, for two. Explain one link between operations and another function, for two, or two such links, for four.
Longer questions on how a business makes its product lean on the same ideas: efficiency, quality, cost, sustainability, and the other functions.
The four-mark pattern
- Name the first link. Marketing tells operations how much to make.
- Show it in the case. Station Road needs about 250 loaves a night, so Mill Lane must bake 1,450 instead of 1,200.
- Name the second link. Finance pays for what operations needs.
- Show it in the case. At 600 loaves an hour the oven is now busy for about two hours and 25 minutes, so finance must decide whether to find $45,000 for a second oven.
The trap: a function named, not a link shown: 'Operations works with marketing and finance' names two functions. It shows nothing passing between them.
A link is something one function needs from the other: a number of loaves, a sum of money, a baker. Say what it is, and use a figure or a name from the case.
Explain two ways the operations function at Lena's Bakery Ltd depends on other business functions when the Station Road shop opens.
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