Operational Management

Introduction

Operations management is concerned with the production and delivery of goods and services. It encompasses the design of products and processes, the planning and execution of production, and the acquisition and deployment of resources. Efficient operations can provide a firm with major competitive advantages, as the ability to respond to consumer and market requirements quickly, at low cost, and with high quality is vital for sustained profitability and growth.

The course aims to familiarize you with the problems and issues confronting operations managers and provide you with concepts, insights, and tools to address these issues in order to gain a competitive advantage through operations.

We will explore how different business strategies require different business processes and, conversely, how different operational capabilities enable and support various strategies to achieve a competitive advantage. A process view of operations will be used to analyze key operational dimensions such as capacity management, cycle time management, supply chain and logistics management, and quality management. Additionally, we will connect to recent developments such as lean or world-class manufacturing, just-in-time operations, time-based competition, and business re-engineering.

Course content

• Overview of the course: Operations management defined; linking operations to corporate strategy.
• Business process re-engineering: a business management strategy focusing on the analysis and design of workflows and processes within an organization.
• Identification and management of bottlenecks: techniques to identify bottlenecks and optimize process flow.
• Waiting line models: why queues form, an introduction to queuing models, trade-offs, and managerial insights.
• AI in operations management.
• Classification of products: functional and innovative products.
• Inventory management: the planning and controlling of inventories to meet the competitive priorities of the organization.
• The "Beer Game."
• The "Outsourcing Game."

2 of the teaching hours in this course are dedicated to CSR, ethics, social and environmental issues.