Operations performance objectives
This first point made in this section is that operations objectives are very broad. Operations management has an impact on the five broad categories of stakeholders in any organisation. Stakeholders is a broad term but is generally used to mean anybody who could have an interest in, or is affected by, the operation. The five groups are: * Customers - These are the most obvious people who will be affected by any business. What the chapter goes on to call the five operations performance objectives apply primarily to this group of people. * Suppliers - Operations can have a major impact on suppliers, both on how they prosper themselves, and on how effective they are at supplying the operation. * Shareholders - Clearly, the better an operation is at producing goods and services, the more likely the whole business is to prosper and shareholders will be one of the major beneficiaries of this. * Employees - Similarly, employees will be generally better off if the company is prosperous; if only because they are more likely to be employed in the future. However operations responsibilities to employees go far beyond this. It includes the general working conditions which are determined by the way the operation has been designed. * Society - Although often having no direct economic connection with the company, individuals and groups in society at large can be impacted by the way its operations managers behave. The most obvious example is in the environmental responsibility exhibited by operations managers.

The five performance objectives quality, speed, dependability, flexibility, and cost.
Quality
Quality is placed first in our list of performance objectives because many authorities believe it to be the most important. Certainly more has been written about it than almost any other operations performance objective over the last