Who Should Take This Class?

Below are the (un-edited) responses of former students who took OPNS454 in Fall 2003. (Given that I solicited answers by email, there likely is a bias in positive reporting...)

Who should consider taking OPNS454?

  1. Anyone who wants to be a general manager.
  2. Any person who will work for a product driven company. I also think that strategy classes are good for everybody who want to develop a strategy mindset.
  3. As a MMM who wants to manage in a product driven company, but not to do logisitics or be on a plant floor (i.e. someone who wants to do more of the marketing/finance), I thought this was a great option to fill our Ops elective - much higher level, strategic, linking ops decisions to market strategy rather than getting into the nitty-gritty details of setting up a line or supply chain...
  4. I anticipate that OPNS454 will prove very useful during my career in consulting (BCG). This course integrated many of the “toolbox” applications from the core course into a holistic framework from which company-wide objectives could be seen. After all how often do companies directly say “I want to simplify my product-line and improve supply-chain coordination.” (Almost never) Rather, they say “I want to improve my bottom line performance” and ask others to identify how to do so.
  5. I have a few thoughts about who should consider taking OPNS454. I am going into brand management and took the course not because I plan to do much work in operations, but because I wanted to better understand the operations role within an organization and to be able to help make intelligent operational decisions (or at least know the right questions to ask). That being said, I would recommend OPNS454 to any first year who wants to take an additional ops course and only has room in their schedule for one more. It is a great “deeper dive” into the material covered in the core course. I also think it would help if you stressed that the course is ½ qualitative and ½ quantitative. I think a lot of students are afraid of taking OPNS454 because they think it will be over their heads quantitatively. This is not the case at all, and the course will really help them conceptually discuss and understand the operation issues their future companies may face.
  6. Anyone who wants to truly understand how operations play a critical role in business strategy. Whether you are a strategy person or an operations person – you need to understand the strategic perspective of operations in order to maximize your profitability…any strategy without incorporating the operations perspective is flawed and any operations perspective without understanding how it reinforces the firm’s strategy could be wasteful and even damaging! I had a strategy consulting background and I found this course incredibly useful, I gained a new perspective and set of tools for which to ananlyze a firm’s position and strategy. While I won’t work in operations per say, the perspective I learned with benefit all of my ongoing strategy work!
  7. I think that the course is very helpful for anyone who is going into consulting and, to a lesser extent, into general management.
  8. OPNS454 is an excellent class for anyone who expects (wants) to be involved in high level strategy for a company that gains some degree of competitive advantage from operational excellence. Thus, it applies to anyone who aspires to general management within a product-focused company as well as anyone headed for strategy consulting. It also provides excellent perspective for anyone planning to go into a non-operations role (marketing, finance, business development, etc.) within an operations-intensive company.
  9. I wanted to move into strategy and operations based consulting and felt this class helped prepare me for this. Our term project felt like a model consulting engagement with LaFarge and I’m sure I will use the concepts I learned in the future.
  10. Although all students will benefit from the course, the class is ideal for students who are interested in applying core concepts from Ops/Strat/Finance into a tactical framework that optimizes an organization from start to finish (i.e the complete value chain).
  11. OPS 454 was one of the best classes I took in Kellogg. I thought it was very useful for to-be/wanna-be consultants. It bridged what I learned in core ops and strategy. So you learn how to design operations according to strategy. I talked a lot about this class in my McKinsey interview and I got an offer! Also I think this class is somewhat helpful for those who goes to marketing, since the class let student think about what value to provide customers within the operational capacity.


How does OPNS454 differ from, and complement, other electives?

  1. I think that operations strategy is a good capstone course for those who would like to tie basic operations to other learning at Kellogg. 454 is more high level and requires more general knowledge than any of the other operations electives.
  2. Didn't take any others, but again, the high level strategic view made it useful for someone who needs to understand the big picture of Ops but work in that function. Very strategic, linking ops decisions to market strategy. Fits in well with marketing and strategy electives.
  3. 454 complements all of the other “*.Strategy” electives (marketing strategy, marketing channel strategy, advertising strategy) because it takes a slightly different perspective. It prioritizes operations concepts first. Taking only one of these “*.strategy” electives would be limiting and lead to a skewed (one-sided?) perspective of how to approach business problems.
  4. I didn’t take any other operations electives (aside from Spreadsheet Modeling), so I can’t speak to how your course differs/complements them. I do think it is the perfect 2nd course, if students aren’t planning to major in operations and just want to get a little more exposure.
  5. The course complements many other elective courses in other departments that are useful for future consultants. The ones that come to mind immediately are Fin-D and LEAP, but I am sure that there are others.
  6. Beautifully - anywhere from managerial accounting (reducing OH etc.) to international finance (hedging strategies) to marketing (integration of innovation & customer needs).
  7. Topics from OPNS454 turn up in unexpected places (e.g., yield management was addressed in both OPNS454 and Pricing Strategy). In my mind, OPNS454 is one of several courses that consider corporate strategy at a high level. The topics covered in these classes are very similar (and sometimes the same). However, each class has a different perspective. It is only through seeing several different perspectives that we, as students, can get a good sense for how to make firm-level strategic decisions.
  8. I only took the core class and this one. I feel like it differs from the core class by moving out of the roots of operations (Little’s Law, balanced loading, etc.) into a more holistic view of how operations can effect a company’s business. You apply the “roots” you learned in the core class to come up with operational strategies that a firm can follow to improve its overall business.
  9. The course covers both depth and breadth of an organization’s operation using lecture, case, and project work.


How does OPNS454 differ from, and complement, OPNS455 (supply chain elective)?

Following are answers from students who took both electives:

  1. I took both classes and I don't consider the overlap between them significant - even though some topics are covered in both classes, the framework that is used to address the issues is very distinct in each class. Comparing them, I would say that OPNS454 is more about breadth of coverage (addressing with appropriate depth a lot of issues) and OPNS455 is about depth of coverage (addresses with strong depth a limited set of issues).
  2. Two different approaches. OPNS454 teach about general shape of operations structure to serve a marketing/strategy purpose at a fairly big picture level. OPNS455, gets also into details of the implementation of the strategy (tactical measures: how to structure a price discount scheme, etc). OPNS455 is also more concern with the movement of goods and information in a value chain (good complement for the Channel course). OPNS454 tackle, for example, the decision of how many plants to install worldwide. Both classes have a higher than average work load, but the learning/effort ratio is excellent – class materials, website and recommended readings are very good.
  3. OPNS 454 is really a very general course which I felt is applicable to anyone going into any kind of general management role where they will be confronted with any kind of operations issues. I’m going into consulting so it was important to the kind of “big picture” operations strategy background which the course offered. OPNS455 appears to be more applicable to people who know for sure that they will be working directly with supply chain/logistics type issues. OPNS 454 is applicable is to everyone is any industry (service or manufacturing or whatever)…whereas OPNS455 is really a more focused course for people knowing that they will deal with supply chain/logistics issues in their next jobs.
  4. I would say there is about 25% overlap but the two courses are very complementary. For people that what to have a strong grip on operations taking both courses will allow them to command a strong competitive advantage. Prof. Van Mieghem, as a 1st year, I wasn’t clear what operations strategy was until you went through your FedEx vs UPS example in our first class. Sharing this would help. Prof. Chopra, outlining how the four drivers in your course – Inventory, Transportation, Facilities, Information – would change between a FedEx vs UPS or a FedEx Air vs FedEx Ground or some other example would be useful to first years.
  5. There is some overlap but overall I think they complement each other. Both of them are great classes.
  6. SCM class is more technical. I highly recommend to take 454 to everyone...even if they didn't do well in core ops class...there are less calculations in 454 but more strategy. But SCM is for more hard cores.


Any final words of advice regarding this OPNS454 elective to first years?

  1. Great class, totally fine as a night class (and nice to be able to switch nights if needed one week assuming you teach two sections again).
  2. My take-away from 454 was more related to a “perspective” versus any one specific application. If students enroll to gain more depth behind certain core topics (e.g., how to derive more complicated EOQ formulas) they will likely be disappointed. However, if their goal is to integrate the basic concepts into a more complete business analysis, they should be successful.
  3. As an anecdote and to help sell the course to non-operations majors, you can tell them that one of your students got a job in brand management through her operations project in your class (I am going to Target and I got the job through my project in your class). So, it is clearly a good decision for all Kellogg students--not just MMMs or operations majors!
  4. This course is a ton of work, but I really feel as though I learned a lot, stretched myself, and added a lot of value for the client in our final project. I have already been enthusiastically recommending the course to the many first-years who have been asking my advice about classes to take.
  5. One of my favorite classes. Line your project up for success or else it will be somewhat wasteful.
  6. I really enjoyed the course. The cases and term project were instrumental in the learning process.
  7. I would recommend taking ops 454 closer to the end of their Kellogg career when they will be able to incorporate other disciplines (strategy, marketing, decision sciences) more fully.
  8. This course is essentially a legitimate strategy course. … It’s about evaluating efficiencies, costs and benefits, and linking them to the bottom line. The speakers are tremendous and relevant to the cases. The math isn’t rocket science, but it is informative and easy to remember and valuable. Your project is real and makes a true impact on the client and the work load in the course is balanced.
  9. Don’t fall into the fallacy that only operations people should learn about operations. If you came from Mkt and are planning to go into consulting, this is your unique chance to learn about operations. It is exactly as taking Fin-D even though you are not, and not plan to be, a finance person.