Course Description
Covers concepts, tools and techniques for evaluation of research proposals and studies. Involves designing, conducting, evaluating, and presenting oral and written forms of research. Assignments build on quantitative and qualitative research methods. Recommended for the graduating semester; may serve as the capstone for certain majors.
Course Objectives
- Describe what a supply chain is and how it relates to a particular organization’s operations function
- Identify some of the major operations and supply chain activities, as well as career opportunities in these areas
- Explain what a business process is and how the business perspective differs from a traditional, functional perspective
- Create process maps for a business process and use them to understand and diagnose a process
- Describe what the operations function is and why it is critical to an organization’s survival
- Discuss what is meant by operations management and supply chain management
- Identify some of the major operations and supply chain activities, as well as career opportunities in these areas
- Make a case for studying both operations management and supply chain management
- Calculate and interpret some common measures of process performance
- Discuss the importance of benchmarking and distinguish between competitive benchmarking and process benchmarking
- Use and interpret some common continuous improvement tools
- Explain what the Supply-Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) model is and why it is important to businesses
- Explain why information flows are a necessary part of any supply chain
- Describe in detail how supply chain information needs vary according to the organizational level and the direction of the linkages (upstream or downstream)
- Describe and differentiate among ERP, DSS, CRM, SRM, and logistics applications
- Describe what business process management (BPM) tools and cloud computing are and how they might impact future operations and supply chain activities
Week 1
Lecture: Introduction
Lecture: Operations and Supply Chain Strategies
Outcomes
- Describe what the operations function is and why it is critical to an organization’s survival
- Describe what a supply chain is and how it relates to a particular organization’s operations function
- Discuss what is meant by operations management and supply chain management
- Identify some of the major operations and supply chain activities, as well as career opportunities in these areas
- Make a case for studying both operations management and supply chain management
- Explain the relationship between business strategies and functional strategies and the difference between structural and infrastructural elements of the business
- Describe the main operations and supply chain decision categories
- Explain the concept of customer value and calculate a value index score
- Differentiate between order winners and qualifiers and explain why this difference is important to developing the operations and supply chain strategy for a firm
- Discuss the concept of trade-offs and give an example
- Define core competencies and give an example of how core competencies in the operations and supply chain areas can be used for competitive advantage
- Explain the importance of strategic alignment and describe the four stages of alignment between the operations and supply chain strategy and the business strategy
Week 2
Lecture: Process Choice and Layout Decision in Manufacturing Services
Lecture: Business Processes
Outcomes
- Describe the characteristics of the five classic types of manufacturing processes
- Discuss how different manufacturing process choices support different market requirements
- Explain how different manufacturing processes can be linked together via the supply chain
- Describe the critical role of customization in manufacturing, including the degree and point of customization, as well as upstream versus downstream activities
- Discuss the three dimensions that differentiate services from one another: the service package, customization and customer contact. Also explain the different managerial challenges driven by these dimensions
- Position a service on a conceptual model and explain the underlying managerial challenges
- Explain how different service processes support different market requirements
- Develop a product-based layout using line balancing, and calculate basic performance measures for the line
- Develop a functional layout based on total distance traveled
- Explain what a business process is and how the business perspective differs from a traditional, functional perspective
- Create process maps for a business process and use them to understand and diagnose a process
- Calculate and interpret some common measures of process performance
- Discuss the importance of benchmarking and distinguish between competitive benchmarking and process benchmarking
- Describe the Six Sigma methodology, including the steps of the DMAIC process
- Use and interpret some common continuous improvement tools
- Explain what the Supply-Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) model is and why it is important to businesses
Week 3
Lecture: Managing Quality
Lecture: Managing Capacity
Outcomes
- Discuss the various definitions and dimensions of quality and why quality is important to operations and supply chains
- Describe the different costs of quality, including internal and external failure, appraisal and prevention costs
- Describe what TQM is, along with its seven core principles
- Calculate process capability ratios and indices and set up control charts for monitoring continuous variables and attributes
- Describe the key issues associated with acceptance sampling, as well as the use of OC curves
- Distinguish between Taguchi’s quality loss function and the traditional view of quality
- Explain what capacity is, how firms measure capacity and the difference between theoretical and rated capacity
- Describe the pros and cons associated with three different capacity strategies: lead, lag and match
- Apply a wide variety of analytical tools to capacity decisions, including expected value and break-even analysis, decision trees, learning curves, the theory of constraints, waiting line theory, and Little’s law
Week 4
Lecture: Supply Management
Lecture: Logistics
Outcomes
- Identify and describe the various steps of the strategic sourcing process
- Perform and interpret the results of a simple spend analysis
- Use portfolio analysis to identify the appropriate sourcing strategy for a particular good or service
- Describe the rationale for outsourcing and discuss when it is appropriate
- Perform a simple total cost analysis
- Show how multi-criteria decision models can be used to evaluate suppliers and interpret the results
- Identify when negotiations should be used and the purpose of contracts
- Perform and interpret the results of a simple spend analysis
- Use portfolio analysis to identify the appropriate sourcing strategy for a particular good or service
- Describe the rationale for outsourcing and discuss when it is appropriate
- Perform a simple total cost analysis
- Describe the major steps of the procure-to-pay cycle
- Discuss some of the longer-term trends in supply management and why they are important
Week 5
Lecture: Forecasting
Lecture: Sales and Operations Planning
Outcomes
- Discuss the importance of forecasting and identify the most appropriate type of forecasting approach, given different forecasting situations
- Apply a variety of time series forecasting models, including moving average, exponential smoothing and linear regression models
- Develop causal forecasting models using linear regression and multiple regressions
- Calculate measures of forecasting accuracy and interpret the results
- Distinguish among strategic planning, tactical planning, and detailed planning and control
- Describe why sales and operations planning (S&OP) is important to an organization and its supply chain partners
- Generate multiple alternative sales and operations plans for a firm
- Describe the differences between top-down and bottom-up S&OP, and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of level, chase and mixed production strategies
- Discuss the organizational issues that arise when firms decide to incorporate S&OP into their efforts
- Examine how S&OP can be used to coordinate activities up and down the supply chain
- Apply optimization modeling techniques to the S&OP process
Week 6
Lecture: Managing Inventory Throughout the Supply Chain
Lecture: Managing Production Across the Supply Chain
Outcomes:
- Describe the various roles of inventory, including the different types of inventory and inventory drivers
- Distinguish between independent demand and dependent demand inventory
- Calculate the restocking level for a periodic review system
- Calculate the economic order quantity (EOQ) and reorder point (ROP) for a continuous review system
- Determine the best order quantity when volume discounts are available
- Calculate the target service level and target stocking point for a single-period inventory system
- Describe how inventory decisions affect other areas of the supply chain. In particular, describe the bullwhip effect, inventory positioning issues, and the impacts of transportation, packaging and material handling considerations
- Explain why information flows are a necessary part of any supply chain
- Describe in detail how supply chain information needs vary according to the organizational level and the direction of the linkages (upstream or downstream)
- Describe and differentiate among ERP, DSS, CRM, SRM, and logistics applications
- Describe what business process management (BPM) tools and cloud computing are and how they might impact future operations and supply chain activities
Week 7
Lecture: Just-In-Time (JIT) Logistics and Lean Production
Lecture: Managing Projects
Outcomes
- Describe JIT/lean and differentiate between the lean philosophy and kanban systems
- Discuss the lean perspective on waste and describe the eight major forms of waste, or muda, in an organization
- Discuss the lean perspective on inventory and describe how a kanban system helps control inventory levels and synchronize the flow of goods and material across a supply chain
- Describe how the concepts of the lean supply chain and Lean Six Sigma represent natural extensions of the lean philosophy
- Explain how a two-card kanban system works
- Calculate the number of kanban cards needed in a simple production environment
- Show how MRP and kanban can be linked together and illustrate the process using a numerical example
- Explain the difference between routine business activities and projects
- Describe the five major phases of a project
- Construct a Gantt chart and interpret the results
- Construct a project network diagram and calculate the earliest and latest start and finish times for all activities
- Identify the critical activities and paths in a network
- Crash a project
Week 8
Lecture: Developing Products and Services
Outcomes
- Explain why product design is important to the success of a business
- Describe the six dimensions of product design that are of particular interest to operations and supply chain managers
- Describe the five phases of product and service development and explain the difference between sequential development and concurrent engineering
- Discuss the different roles played by areas such as engineering and accounting during the development process
- Describe some of the most common approaches to improving product and service designs, including the define-measure-analyze-design-verify (DMADV) process, quality function deployment (QFD), design for manufacturability (DFM), and target costing
The course description, objectives and learning outcomes are subject to change without notice based on enhancements made to the course. October 2013