This course counts toward the following majors:Operations.

Operations management is the management of business processes--that is, the management of the recurring activities of a firm. This course aims to familiarize students with the problems and issues confronting operations managers, and to provide the language, concepts, insights and tools to deal with these issues to gain competitive advantage through operations. We examine how different business strategies require different business processes and how different operational capabilities allow and support different strategies to gain competitive advantage. A process view of operations is used to analyze different key operational dimensions such as capacity management, cycle time management, supply chain and logistics management, and quality management. Finally, we connect to recent developments such as lean or world-class manufacturing, just-in-time operations, time-based competition and business re-engineering. Prerequisite: DECS-433 or DECS-436.

Spreadsheet Modeling for Managerial Decisions (OPNS-450-0)

This course counts toward the following majors: Analytical Consulting, Decision Sciences, Operations.

This course focuses on structuring, analyzing and solving managerial decision problems on Excel spreadsheets. We address problems of resource allocation (how to use available resources optimally), risk analysis (how to simulate the effects of uncertainty in problem parameters), decision analysis (how to analyze sequential decisions involving uncertainty), data analysis (how to synthesize the available data into useful information) and forecasting (how to extrapolate past observations into the future). In each area, we pose specific problems from operations, finance and marketing, structure them on Excel spreadsheets, and analyze and solve them using the available Excel commands, tools and add-ins. The course involves a hands-on, in-class learning experience in modeling and analyzing a variety of business decision problems on a common spreadsheet platform. It should, therefore, enhance one's problem-solving capabilities as well as spreadsheet skills. A good working knowledge of Microsoft Excel is required.

Operations Strategy (OPNS-454-0)

This course counts toward the following majors: Analytical Consulting, Operations.

In this course, students learn how operations strategy can add value by tailoring a set of core principles to a specific business setting. The course provides a framework to formulate an operations strategy and analyze, value, and optimize the key decisions involved in operations strategy. The key evaluation metric is how operations strategy impacts the net present value of the firm. The key decisions studied are choosing competitive operational competencies and benchmarking; capacity expansion, timing, flexibility and location; sourcing and contracting; risk management and operational hedging; revenue management; improvement and learning. This course builds on the core operations class. Students should also be familiar with the basics of finance, economics and strategy, as the strategic decisions studied in this course require a detailed analysis and understanding of the underlying operations. Thus this course has a greater amount of concreteness and detail than a competitive strategy class, and uses a combination of in-depth case analysis, mini-lectures, presentations and qualitative discussions of other examples. The course is intended for students interested in operations and supply chain management, general management, or management consulting.