BUS432E Operations Management (not offered)

• Topics

  The course gives students an understanding of basic relationships within production processes, and how these relationships affect the overall performance of a business. Variability is a major challenge for most businesses, and handling variability is therefore an important issue. Throughout the course, we will focus on analytical methods to plan and optimize production.

  The main topics of the course are:

  • Operational strategies
  • Process management
  • Little's law
  • Bottlenecks
  • Inventory management
  • Aggregate production planning
  • Detailed planning/scheduling
  • Handling variability
  • JIT/Lean

• Learning outcome

  The course is about analyzing, planning, and improving processes that produce goods or services. The course is useful to students who seek careers where they will be involved in the planning process; be it as a planner, a controller, a finance manager or as a management consultant.

  After completing the course, the students will be able to:

  Knowledge

  • Understand the importance of operational  planning and the challenges an organisation encounters.
  • Understand how operational strategies are developed.
  • Understand basic relationships of production processes and how these affect business performance.
  • Understand how variability is a major challenge for most businesses.

  Skills

  • Analyse, plan and improve processes for the production of goods or services.
  • Plan and manage production processes in different types of businesses.
  • Apply basic analytical methods to make operational decisions.
  • Handle variability in operational processes.

  Competence

  • Use analytical methods to plan and optimize the production of goods or services.

• Teaching

  Lectures

• Credit reduction due to overlap

  This is the English version of BUS432. A student cannot get credit for both courses.

  The following limitation applies only to students in BUS major, who started before autumn 2020: BUS432/BUS432E cannot be combined with BUS403 as "minimum two" courses in BUS major.

• Requirements for course approval

  Two submissions, 1-4 students per group.

  Course approval from BUS432 is valid for BUS432E.

• Assessment

  Four-hour written school exam

• Grading Scale

  A - F

• Literature

  Anupindi, et al., Managing Business Process Flows. Principles of Operations Management, Pearson Prentice Hall, 3rd edition.

  Excerpts of articles and textbooks. More information is available on the course page in Canvas.