Course Description
You’re
starting to learn one of the most interesting and challenging areas in the
business called Operations Management.
Operations management is the planning, designing, executing and control of the
processes/activities in the Operations
Function. Operations function is the group of all activities/processes that
transforms inputs into products or services using organization’s resources.
Likewise, marketing function promotes demand and finance function provides
capital.
Today’s
business world is becoming increasingly dynamic and competitive in all of the
performance dimensions of an organization- cost, quality, speed and flexibility.
To survive or to become the industry leader at best, every organization has to
effectively and efficiently manage these dimensions. These dimensions are in a
one-to-one relationship with functioning of an organization. Many other courses
in the core curriculum tend to treat the firm as a "black box", in
this course we will be primarily concerned with "opening up" the
black box and discovering what makes a firm "tick" - or, for that
matter, "stop ticking". The challenge for operations managers is to produce products and deliver
services in a way that is compatible with the business strategy of the company.
Typically these managers struggle to balance needs for lower costs, higher
quality, shorter delivery times, and greater flexibility, while at the same
time they are challenged to get the orders for each customer out on time. This
course will introduce you to the operational challenges that managers encounter
and provide a set of tools to aid you in designing and managing processes in
the real world.
Since operations function varies from one industry to
another and we have a lot to cover in this limited time, our focus will be on
the operations functions common to the majority of industries. This course
primarily concentrates on the material, technology, and information aspect of
an organization and relates them, to a limited degree, to the human resources
aspect. The subject topics included in the course are: introduction to OM and production
systems, operations strategy, quality management, quality control, forecasting,
product and process design, capacity planning, operations technologies, supply
chain management, just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing, inventory management, and
production planning. These are organized into four broad areas: introduction,
planning the use of resources, managing operations, and maintaining operations.
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