Operations 

Operations/Production Planning – Small Business Notes -- How efficient you produce your product and/or service affects the cost and quality of what you produce.

Management Plans – Small Business Notes -- How efficient you produce your product and/or service affects the cost and quality of what you produce.

Setting-up Business Operations – Small Business Notes -- Running your business on a day-to-day basis is comprised of many different small decisions.

Productivity Management – BizMove.com -- The aim of this guide is to provide small business owners and managers with an overview of how company productivity can be improved.

Fixing Production Mistakes – BizMove.com -- This guide is intended for small manufacturers and deals with the essential issues and steps that should be considered by a manufacturer when a production mistake has been found.

How an Order Views Your Company – HBS Working Knowledge -- Pioneering research that helped ignite today’s intense focus on the customer. The key? Know your order cycle management.

Four Ways to Innovate in Operations – HBS Working Knowledge -- Innovation in operations—not to be confused with mere operational excellence or improvement—can yield competitive advantage.

Operations and the Competitive Edge – HBS Working Knowledge -- Many managers expect operations organizations to fulfill only a support role. But an effective operations strategy can give you a competitive advantage.

Best Practices for Benchmarking – HBS Working Knowledge -- Benchmarking isn’t just about data—culture and circumstances must be taken into account when you view the results. Here are the best practices of leading practitioners and advisers.

Incentives and Operational Excellence – HBS Working Knowledge -- Operational problems are a drag on business and often can be traced to poor controls in inter-organizational settings. Here are his suggestions for tightening up those controls.

When It Makes Sense to Cut Practices, Not People – HBS Working Knowledge -- Are there alternatives to layoffs? Sure—eliminating unproductive practices and procedures can quickly reduce costs and make your company more efficient. The key is identifying the right practices to eliminate: those that have an immediate impact on spend rates. Here's how.

HBS Toolkit: Operations Instructional Workbook – HBS Working Knowledge -- The word "operations" may evoke images of a large factory, but an operation is really any process that takes inputs and transforms them into outputs of greater value. This instructional workbook from the HBS Toolkit provides a brief introduction to basic concepts of operations and illustrates how a complex operation can be broken down into its components, described and mapped in a way that makes it easier to understand and improve.

Purchasing

How to Create a Formal Purchasing Program – Entrepreneur.com -- Make sure you're purchasing quality supplies at good prices by formalizing your business's purchasing.

How to Find and Work With Suppliers – Entrepreneur.com -- Whether you're looking for raw materials for manufacturing or finished products to resell, this guide will help you find and forge great relationships with suppliers.

7 Places to Find New Products to Sell – Entrepreneur.com -- The ability to locate reasonably priced merchandise to sell can make or break a business. Here are seven places to start looking.

Buy or Lease

Equipment Buy vs. Lease – CCH Financial Planning Toolkit -- Should you lease or buy? Use this calculator to find out! We calculate monthly payments and your total net cost. By comparing these amounts, you can determine which is the better value for you.

To Lease or Not To Lease? – Entrepreneur.com -- That is the question. Equipment leasing makes Hamlets out of most entrepreneurs.

Equipment Leases: When Can You Get Out of Them? – Entrepreneur.com -- What you need to know about contract law and how it applies to your leased office equipment.

Outsourcing

Outsourcing – It is not just about Cost Cutting – HBS Working Knowledge -- To get the real strategic value out of your third-party relationships, the first thing to do is throw out what you thought you knew about outsourcing.

Outsmarting with Outsourcing – HBS Working Knowledge -- Your company has decided to outsource and put you in charge of the initiative. Learn how to quickly and cost effectively implement outsource projects.

Inventory Management

Managing your Inventory – BizMove.com -- Presented in this guide is a sampling of information that should be helpful to business owners and managers in dealing with inventory management problems.

Retail Stock Control – BizMove.com -- Stock control is necessary if the retailer is to offer customers a balanced assortment.

Inventory Analysis – CCH Financial Management Toolkit -- Use this calculator to determine how much inventory you should hold, and efficient timing of your inventory orders.

Control of Inventory in a World of Lean Retailing – HBS Working Knowledge -- Manufacturers of consumer goods are in the hot seat these days.  But there is no need to surrender to escalating costs of inventories.

Managing Your Inventory – Iowa Small Business Development Centers -- The key to successful management is to examine the marketplace environment and create employment and profit opportunities that provide the potential growth and financial viability of the business.