1. Introduction (about the topic of research)
Today's companies are operating in a turbulent and unstable environment, and are struggling to align its organizational elements, business processes and operations in order to satisfy key stakeholders requirements. Everyday operations are usually characterized with many data that requires constant and real time processing. It can be said that this represents the opportunity for various techniques and approaches to be applied in order to solve these everyday issues and challenges. Operations management (OM) represents a set of techniques and approaches that are usually applied by companies for achieving efficiency and excellent results in operations. Various methods are developed based on OM approach and concepts that are considered as industry standard and best practice.

Because of the ability to process large amount of data and provide accurate results, OM concepts are widely used in both manufacturing and service operations. As stated by GrÃ¶nroos (1994), majority of companies are facing service competition, and because of that, managing service operations is of a strategic importance. Within service industry, OM concepts are providing decisions required by operations managers for simultaneous production and consumption of an intangible product. Observed through the prism of business processes, it could be said that operations management represents the process of applying different techniques on operational level within organization, with the aim of assisting decision makers and process owners. Next major group of activities are present within the operations management â€“ designing & planning, organizing, execution and supervising (controling) activities. All of them involve the analysis of assets, costs and human resources performance.

One of the key aim of OM concepts and techniques when applied on business processes is to help in achieving the operational efficiency. Not surprisingly, this is equality important in service and manufacturing industries. A numerous factors could be influencing business processes and operations in achieving efficiency and Excellency in results. For example, there are type of service, location of the business, way how service will be delivered, facilities organization, site characteristics and environment, type of equipment and maintenance. By managing these and many other factors, a good operational results could be achieved, and as stated by Jeong and Phillips (2001), achieving operational efficiency could have led to the much needed total productivity improvement.

Aim of this research is to analyze the operations management concepts applied within service operations and business processes. This research is organized as follows. Section 2 is covering literature review of the solutions, methods and models applied in various service operations based on OM concepts and approach. Section 3 provides the focus area in terms of service processes that will be analyzed. Section 4 contains OM concepts applied in solving issues and challenges within analyzed processes and operations. In sections 5 and 6, findings are summarized and recommendations are made respectively. Section 7 contains concluding remarks, key findings and fields for further research.

2. Literature review
Operations management

Dave Flatch, CEO of Flatchâ€™es Latches Hardware Distributors, is t...