Course-PM

MTT096 Production management lp2 HT23 (7.5 hp)

Course is offered by the department of Technology Management and Economics

Contact details

Examiner                    Peter Almström (PA)               Chalmers

                                                                                                          +46 31 772 1283

                                                                                                          peter.almstrom@chalmers.se

Teachers                     Mirka Kans (MK)                     Chalmers

                                    Philip Åhlin (PÅ)                       Chalmers

                                    Chamirangika Madushani Hetti Arachchige  (CH)            Chalmers

                                    Dan Paulin (DP)                       Chalmers

                              

Guest lecturers         Darko Davidovic (DD)             IF Metall

                                    Anna Davidsson (AD)              Volvo Personvagnar AB

                                    Richard Hedman (RH)             SKF AB

                                    Mikael Persson (MP)               Good Solutions AB

                                    Daniel Nåfors (DN)                  McKinsey & Company 

                                    Robin Sundqvist (RS)               Polestar Automotive Sweden AB

                                      

Student administration                

                                   Catarina Stuchly   catarina.stuchly@chalmers.se                                    

 

Course objective

The objective of the course is to give a comprehensive introduction to production management, valid for all future work roles within the production engineering field. There will be a strong focus on practical and applicable knowledge with several interactions with industry. Theories and concepts presented in the course will have a broad application area within production of all kind of goods and services. However, application examples, student assignments etc. will focus on the manufacturing industry. A broad overview of the manufacturing enterprise and important concepts and philosophies for organising and managing manufacturing firms will be provided in order to form a common base and terminology for the successive courses as well as for the student’s future professional career. 

We are striving to create a good learning situation, where focus is on high level of engagement from the students with weekly assessments rather than a written exam in the end of the course. We use a formative assessment approach where it will be ok to fail, but never ok to not put in an effort and be an active learner in the course.

Schedule

See the Calendar in Canvas. The Calendar will differ a bit from TimeEdit.

Course literature

There will be links to the literature in the Modules.

Learning objectives and syllabus

Learning objectives:

After the course the students will be able to: - Discern and select between different production concepts and philosophies. - Put the production function into an enterprise context. - Define key performance indicators that measures and control the production according to strategy. - Define important concepts such as productivity, flexibility and quality in a production context. - Account for the basics in Lean Production and Supply Chain Management. - Make basic sourcing decisions. - Make investment, product, and profitability calculations. - Manage maintenance and other support functions. - Account for the importance of standardized operations and minimizing variation. - Make a work sampling study and establish allowances. - Assess the productivity potential of a factory after a short visit. - Manage improvement projects in production. - Discuss the relation between management and union. - Explain how shop-floor data can be used in production management. The students will also retrieve insight into practical problems of managing a manufacturing operation.

Link to the syllabus on Studieportalen.

Study plan

Course design

The scheduled lecture times often include practical in-class exercises and some of these times are set-off for group assignments and study visits. The students will also have to work with the group assignments outside of the scheduled time. Since the examination is distributed over all the course weeks, the students need to spend much more time on self-learning (literature studies) than usual, early in the period.

All lectures are important and the lecturers will convey knowledge that the students will not find in the literature. This knowledge is also part of the examination. It is the students’ responsibility to be active learners, and one aspect of that is to attend to all classes and prepare by reading the assigned literature in advance.

Some learning items require compulsory attendance (marked (Compulsory) in the Calendar). These are the items that are not examined in another way than the students’ active participation. There will be an attendance list that must be signed by each student on the following occasions:

Study visits:

• Volvo Cars
• Company studies to different companies

Guest lectures:

• Digital transformation Workshop
• MES guest lecture from Good Solutions            
• Union relations with IF Metall                                       

There is also compulsory attendance at the oral presentations:

• Examination of the “Plane parts” case
• Presentation of Company studies

Group assignments

There are three group assignments in the course carried out and handed in by the group. Groups are assigned on Canvas. Group size is 3-4 students. 

The first group assignment is a case; “Plane parts”, about make or buy decisions. The second group assignment is a about formulating questions about digital transformation. The third assignment is to perform the company studies.

All assignments are compulsory and will be graded (see Examination below).

Literature

The literature for the course is all electronic. Everything can and in most cases must be accessed from a computer on the Chalmers network (connect by VPN if you are outside the network) or via Chalmers library homepage (logged in with CID).

Main literature is:

Monica Bellgran and Kristina Säfsten, Production Development - Design and Operation of Production Systems, Springer-Verlag, London, 2010.

Zandin K (ed.), Maynard’s Industrial Engineering Handbook, Fifth edition, McGraw Hill, 2001.

Holweg et al. Process theory – The principles of operations management, Oxford University press, 2018.

These are complemented by several articles and other texts that also are available at Chalmers library or on Canvas.

Examination form

The course will be examined through a distributed exam in the form of essay questions every week and group assignments.

The weekly essay questions will be handed in individually. The deadline each week will be at 23.59 Sunday evening. The essay questions will be on the same week’s (and previous weeks’) lecturing content. This will put requirement on the students to plan their time carefully and preferably read the literature in advance of the lecture. There will be a limitation for the number of words for each answer. The answers will be graded on the scale: Fail, 1, and 2 points. If Fail, the student will have the opportunity to hand in again. That second hand-in can never give more than 1 point. Two points are given to answers of high quality. To be considered high quality the answer must contain all important items, providing an argumentation that indicate a high level of learning, must be well structured, and using references to literature (if applicable). The written English is also important, but it doesn’t have to be perfect.

It is always possible for the student to hand in later (until the end of the study period), but the awarded points can in that case never exceed 1 point for each essay. The essays are handed in on Canvas. At least 1p on every assignment and essay is needed to pass the course.

In total there will be 14 essay questions, 2 every week. The assignments will be graded on the scale; Fail (0), 1 or 2 points. If you get 0 p you have to hand in a revision. On 8 of the 14 essays you have the opportunity to hand in a peer review to give a course mate feedback anonymously on his or her essay. You will only be able to hand in feedback to essays that you have handed in an essay in-time yourself. An approved feedback gives 0,5 p.

Since active participation at lectures and exercises is very important for the students' learning, there will be points for being present at non-compulsory lectures. 2p for > 80% (at least 12 out of 15) and 1p for >60% (at least 9 out of 15). This gives the total maximum points:

Item	Maximum points
Essay questions	14 x 2 = 28
Approved feedback	8 x 0,5= 4
Case: “Plane parts”	1
Questions on Digital transformation	1
Company studies	4
Present at non-compulsory lectures and exercises	2
Total	40

 

The points will be transformed into final grade for the course according to the following grading scale:

Points	Grade
0-17	Fail
18-29,5 (>45%)	3
30-35,5 (>75%)	4
36-40 (>90%)	5

Since the students will have the chance to remake all essay and assignment hand-ins, the final grade “Fail” will only be set if the student don’t hand-in an approved rework before the designated deadline. The minimum points is 18 (14 from essays and 4 from group assignments).

Using AI

You are allowed to use an AI like ChatGPT if that helps you to improve you language, however you are discouraged to use the AI to make shortcuts in your learning process. All assignments are formulated to make it hard to use the AI to directly generate an answer. The most important thing we are looking for when grading are the signs that tells us that you have understood and reached a higher level of learning. Never hand in a text that you don't fully understand yourself or a text with expressions that you shouldn't have used  yourself.