The major areas of operations control are purchasing, inventory control, scheduling, and quality control.
Purchasing involves selecting suppliers. The choice of suppliers should result from careful analysis of a number of factors, including price, quality, reliability, credit terms, and shipping costs. Inventory control is the management of stocks of raw materials, work-in-process, and finished goods to minimize the total inventory cost.
Scheduling ensures that materials and other resources are at the right place at the right time. Quality control guarantees that products and services are produced in accordance with design specifications. The major objective of quality control is to see that the organization lives up to the standards it has set for itself on quality.