Welcome to the Business Ops module. You can find here the links to the recorded classes and streaming.

In the first session the module organization, structure and assignments will be introduced. You will explore the time commitments you will need to make and the skills you will develop through the duration of the module. In the second part of the week, the student will get a first glance to the diverse concepts of business operations and their impact in the value proposition of the company.

In the second week of the module different process strategies will be discussed with the studies. The importance of layout and production setup will be revealed. In order to involve the students in the matter a case study will be discussed in the class covering key aspects of process definition.

This week is devoted to learn the proper tools for a detailed process analysis. The students will be also invited to do a team analysis of a process, focusing in the evaluation of the analytical performance, which will force them to get a deep knowledge of commonly used data analysis tools.

The importance of quality in the execution of the business will be highlighter along this week. The impact of quality on the product costs and in the customer experience will be explained to the students, that will be able also to experience it by means of a team practical exercise. Statistical process control and other complex techniques of lean manufacturing will also be presented.

Capacity planning is a big matter of concern for any operation manager. The evaluation of internal capacities implies understanding its own limitations, but also planning capital expenditures to overcome them in the right way and at the right time. The analysis of existing and required capacity implied therefore a good knowledge of the internal process, but also of the competitive landscape and the market. During this week the students will learn about capacity planning and decisions related to it, analyzing also real business cases and situations.

During this week the students will get familiar with the concept of bottleneck and line balancing. After it, they will be capable of a deep complete line analysis. They will have also the capability of not only identifying the weakest link of any production line, but also of proposing solutions and alternatives to solve the constraints.

During this week the students will get familiar with key concepts of lean manufacturing. They will be able to revisit process analysis from the perspective of the value, and follow it along the production line in order to prioritize improvement actions. The importance and impact of addressing product quality upstream will also be made obvious through examples and case studies.

Controversy of inventory management will be explained to the students during the sessions of this week. On one side, they will understand the impact of inventory management for a successful and timely manufacturing strategy. On the other, they will also understand the financial impact of inventories in any running business. As usual, a very practical approach is followed by studying in detail how a world class leading company manages its inventory.

Following the learnings of last week, in these sessions the students will deepen in the knowledge of inventory management by optimizing the company supply chain: inventory placement, outsourcing and other strategies will be analyzed together with the students. Again, a case study will be proposed to be worked out in the teams as best way of consolidating the key concepts of the week.

The management of portfolio of suppliers that combined local with overseas partners requires a careful understanding of the value chain, strong negotiating capabilities but also a deep knowledge of the relevant factors of the business operation. This week, the students will have the opportunity to study relevant cases of the integration of the supply chain in our globalized world, analyzing the motivations and implications of common purchasing and operative strategies.

This week will be devoted to understand the various forecasting methods available to forecasting systems. The student will then be able to describe a typical forecasting process used by business and make simple forecasts and estimations on the forecast error.

During this week the students will learn about the operation planning and scheduling process. They will be explained why the process of matching supply with demand begins with aggregation. They will have to learn how to identify different demand and supply options, and how operations plan and schedules relate to the business plan.

Enterprise resource planning is the setting up of electronic information systems in such a way that information flows from most different parts and processes of the organization. It opens new frontiers to business optimization in very different ways. A simple example could be the influence of manufacturing by customer relationship management (CRM) systems. In order for these systems to work, daily operations needs to be systematically parametrized and automatized. This week, students will learn how to do this and the implications on efficiency and competitive advantage that these new process management techniques can bring to your business.

As a kind of corollary for the module, the last week will be devoted to explain modern project management tools, commonly used by international companies. The theoretical explanation on quality planning of projects and monitoring of execution will help the students to undertake any future assignment and represents a summary of all the key concepts that the module has offered to the students on business operations.

Details of the assessment