Looking at past and present developments in the production and operations management (P/OM) field over time provides insight about where future directions may have us heading. Being in the field, whether academic or practitioner, or both, the sense of direction may seem less important than the ways in which one is involved. Cruise directors have been known to say, it is not where you are going; it is how you get there. In this brief analysis, goals and objectives are equivalent to destinations; alternatively, methods, plans, and agendas are the means of getting there.
operations management; service operations; manufacturing operations; research trends