Operations and Supply Chain Management

Resource Management and Supply Chain Management are key areas in business economics. The course forms, together with the other courses in business economics, the core of the bachelor programme in Economics and Business Administration, HA.

The purpose of this course is to provide the students with a solid knowledge on business economic aspects of operations management. The operations management focus is often limited to the in-house processes (e.g. production and logistics). This course also provides a solid introduction to modern management terms such as Supply Chain Management (SCM). SCM is a discipline in which the company is seen as part of a supply chain consisting of its suppliers, distributors, retailers and customers.

The focus in the course is on the interaction between all participants in the supply chain. The course provides the students with skills that enable them to work with resource planning and SCM, both in projects and seminars.

• Total Quality Management (TQM)
• 
  Project management
  
• Capacity management
• 
  Supplier Management
  
• Forecasting
  
• Logistics
  
• Aggregated planning
• 
  Material Requirement Planning
  
• Inventory management at company level and for the entire value chain
• 
  Routing
• 
  Lean production / Just in Time
  
• Graphical method for solving a simple linear programming problem and calculate dual prices.
  
• Transportation and other network models 

After the course the student should be able to use the theories and models introduced in the course to describe and analyze central aspects of a company and its supply chain. Students should be able to quantify the consequences of various decisions; both in relation to Supply Chain Management in general, and in relation to production control, inventory policy and logistics on a tactical and an operational level. The phrase “theories and models” refers to theories and models within the topics listed under the heading “Content.”

When initiating an analysis and quantifying the consequences of various decisions, the student must be able to choose, among many different models, one that is appropriate. In this process it is expected that the student can state relevant reasons for the choice of a specific model.

In addition, the student should be able to use Excel and a set of VBA Addins to accomplish specific calculation necessary to make the decisions described above.

The student is expected to gain knowledge of the course subjects through independent study of literature. These studies will be supported by lectures on the subjects of the course. The purpose of the lectures is to give an overview of the curriculum and to facilitate the understanding of complicated subject areas.
In addition, the student will learn the skills that are obtained in the course by solving exercise problems. This work can be carried out alone or in a study group. The student will be supported in exercise classes, where solution methods to the exercises will be shown and discussed based on the students’ suggested solutions.

Furthermore, the student trains his or her skills by solving the compulsory assignment. This assignment involves a report within one or more of the subject areas. The compulsory assignment involves typically quantitative analyses involving the use of appropriate Excel worksheets, and the facilities available in such tools.

Scheduled classes:
4 hours of lectures and 1 hour of exercises a week for 1 semester.

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The student is expected to use (SAT):
Lectures: 60 hours.
Preparation: 80 hours.
Practice hours: 15 hours.
Preparation of exercises: 15 hours.
Home assignment: 60 hours.
Exam: 40 hours.
A total of 270 hours.