All over the world govenrments are working hard to save their national economies. Interst rates are being cut and bail out packages are being declared. Every one is hopeful that the worst will be soon over and the happy days will be here again...!
Personally I have my own doubts whether such simple solution will work for a complex problem we have on hand.
From operations managment perspective, People, Process, and Technology working together result in output from a system. The productivity and efficiency, and effectiveness of the system depends on the complex interaction among these factors.
Once we take a look at present situation from this perspective, we start getting the feel of complexity involved. I sincerely feel that the present solutions are not aimed at bringing in in qaulitative or structural changes in the underlying People-Process-Technology combination. Therefore there will be inherent limitations to the results we will get.
Since beginning of industrialization three centuries ago, the economy is becoming more depedent on technology or the knowledge. As technology advances, we pay more for the knowledge content ni the product and service and less forthe material content and the time spent. This does not happen at the regular pace but in spurts of technology breaktroughts!
The economic cycles are propelled by these technology inpulses. Whenever there is a slow down, we need infusion of new technolgy to revive the economy.
I am wondering what will be the combination of technologies that will crank the economies back?
It is remotely possible that by rearranging finance alone we will be able to bring back our economies back on track.

With raw material prices crashing down, input costs are looking favorable. (some friends confirm that the prices of petroleum based raw mateirials have dropped by 30% within four weeks.) But will these lower prices reflect in better margins? Probably not!
There are changes on the demand side too! With 'Credit' fueled 'Consumption Engine' staving for fuel, the demand for produced goods is going down. That means the installed operations capacity (logistics + manufactuering) will not be utilized at a high level. Look at it from 'Break-even analysis' point of view.
This idle capacity means less profits or even loss...
Also the 'pipeline inventory' has a role to play. Lower priced raw materials may be not be available for immediate use. my guess is that 'low cost' raw materials will be available only by start 2009.
Next couple of months will be a dark period. We will have to review our cost structures and pricing strategies, and also the profit expectations! Also during this time some supply as well as demand streams will dry up. This means the supply and demand profiles and related structures and dynamics will change. Byuing and selling terms (credit terms) will also undergo a change. Buyers will expect / impose longer credit terms.
In short, several organizations will have to restructure their major part of their operations.
This will also be a good opprtunity to start working on green initiatives which probably could not get the priority because of time pressure from routine operations running at a very high capacity utilization levles.
Few organizations will come out with new reduced prices probably in combination with low-price versions of their products and services in Q1 - 2009.
With new product-proce positioning, new demand profiles will emerge. At this moment it is not clear how this demand will be but it will be a learning experience to observe business organiozations passing through this economic downturn.

OM has many dimensions viz.:
1. Manufacturing Planning and Control

2. Supply Chain Management

3. Technology Management

Introduction to Operations Management (OM)

In my opinion Operations Management (OM) is going to gain prominance and more attention in coming days. for organizations engaged in 'products', OM encompasses both logistics and manufacturing.