Industrial Management, TEK 250

2019/2020, study period 4, remote course

 

Examiner and lecturer:           Torbjörn Jacobsson, Senior Lecturer, Supply and Operations Management, Tel: 031-7725233, e-mail: torjac@chalmers.se

Lecturer: Ala Pazirandeh Arvidsson, Phd, Supply and Operations Management, Tel: 031-7721372, e-mail: ala.pazirandeh@chalmers.se

Mode of instruction: Online, communications will be facilitated through Canvas and Zoom

Examination dates: 03 Jun 2020, 2.00 pm, take home exam, 28 Aug 2020, 2.00 pm, Johanneberg

Course aims

The aim of this course is to give the students understanding and knowledge of industrial organization and operations management and how management of the production/operations can contribute to companies’ sustainable competitive advantage and long-term success. The course also aims to provide the students with appropriate theories, tools and models to manage and develop production systems, products and services and to develop and evaluate operations and business strategies in different industrial settings.

Content

The course will cover the field of industrial management from mainly a production/operations management perspective, i.e. the activity of managing the resources, which are devoted to the production of products and services. Every organization has an operations function because every organization produces some type of products and/or services. However, from an operations management perspective, the firm is not only viewed as a production system, but also a part of a value chain of suppliers, sub-suppliers, system integrators and customers. The course will cover central areas in the field of industrial- and operations management in order to give the student a comprehensive view of industrial and operations management. Among the issues covered are:

• Operations management
• Lean Production
• Operations strategy
• Process, product and service design
• Supply Chain Management
• Process technology
• Job design and work organization
• Planning and control
• Operations improvement and Total Quality Management

Course objectives

The main objective of the course is to improve participants' ability to develop and analyze companies’ operations and production systems. By the end of the course, participants will hopefully:

• Understand the strategic impact and importance of industrial and operations management
• Have been introduced to the central areas of industrial and operations management.
• Have access to theories, framework and models to develop, design and evaluate production systems and companies’ operations and business strategies.
• Have been stimulated to think critically about emerging concepts and ideas in the field of industrial and operations management.

Organization

The course will be organized around the central themes in operations management. We will use reflective and implementation learning to illustrate the challenges facing the management of operations. The students will both learn and be examine based on mandatory assignments in which central topics in the area of industrial and operations management will be analyzed and discussed in detail. Each module (lecture + assignment + supervision of assignments) of the course will:

• start with a short intro to the topic and the assignment,
• students will then get the assignment for that module that will facilitate their reading and learning,
• individual hand ins on the assignments will be graded pass or fail
• each module will then be concluded with a Q&A session and some general reflections

The theoretical content of the course is defined by the course literature. Compared to pure technological subjects the course literature is quite extensive, and some parts of the literature are real world examples meant to give an illustration to facilitate better understanding.

 

Literature

Book: Slack et al. (2019). Operations Management, Pearson, Ninth Edition (available at “Store”, Chalmers, Camus.)

Additional literature may be distributed during classes or published at the course website.

E-book/Journal via Chalmers library:

1. Liker och Meier, D. (2006), The Toyota Way fieldbook: a practical guide for implementing Toyota´s 4Ps, McGrewHill.

Examination - written take home examination and individual assignments

The examination consists of a written take home examination (max 50 points). All literature, handouts and lectures form a base for the written exam.

Grade 3, 20-29 points, >= 40%

Grade 4, 30-39 points, > = 60%

Grade 5, 40-50 points, >= 80%

In order to complete the course, the students must both pass the assignments and get approved written examination.

 

Assignments

Students will hand in individual written assignments. The aim of the assignment is to facilitate the learning process during the course. The task is to use frameworks and models presented in the given course literature to get a deeper understanding of industrial and operations management. Each hand-in will be graded pass or fail.

The assignment task: to in detail answer questions given for each module.

Submission: each hand-in is to be submitted via Canvas. See deadline for each assignment in the schedule below. Please note that the deadline for handing in the assignment is strict.

Length of hand-ins: The write-ups should be around 1500 words in length and not more than 3 pages A4, single line space). If you are missing data in cases, or if the data in the case seem to contradict each other (as is often the case in reality), you need to make assumptions. These assumptions need to be made explicit.

 

Lectures and assignments- schedule

Course introduction – Operations management

Wednesday 25/3, 13.15- ca 13.45, online via Zoom

Lecturer: Torbjörn Jacobsson and Ala P. Arvidsson

The first class introduces the course and its conducts. Part of the lecture will deal with the requirements put on students to complete the course.

 

Wednesday 25/3, 14.15- ca 14.45, online via Zoom

Lecturer: Ala P. Arvidsson

The basic concepts of operations management will be presented and discussed, the ideas of performance objectives and trade-offs between the different performance objectives.

Literature: Slack et al, chapter 1

Operations performance and strategy

Friday 27/3, 10.00-11.45, Room: online via Zoom

Lecturer: Ala P. Arvidsson

This lecture will cover performance objectives and the basic elements of an operations strategy - the reconciliation of market requirements and operational resources and how operations strategy relates to corporate and business strategy.

Literature: Slack et al, chapter 2-3

Managing product and service innovation and process technology

Friday 3/4, start 10.00, Zoom

Lecturer: Ala P. Arvidsson

In this class, the focus of our attention is on managing product and service innovation and the choice of process technology. At this level, the importance is on the characteristics of the technology and its impact on the companies' operations and strategy. Process technology is evaluated from a general management perspective and how process technology may influence the production processes. Furthermore, during the lecture, central design frameworks and models within product and service innovation will presented and discussed.

Literature: Slack et al, chapter 4, 8

Assignment 2

See assignment details uploaded

Answer these sub-questions and submit via Canvas “Assignment 2”. Deadline for this assignment is Friday 17/4, 17:00.

The structure and scope of operations and supply chain management

Monday 20/4, 10.00-11.45 via Zoom

Lecturer: Ala Pazirandeh Arvidsson

Understanding the nature of the supply network including the supply chain management is critical in understanding competitiveness and efficiency. This lecture will discuss how supply chains and networks are subsequently managed including discussions on risk management. Risk management is about identifying things that could go wrong and stopping them from going wrong.

Literature: Slack et al, chapter 5, 12, 18

Assignment 3

See assignment details uploaded

Answer these sub-questions and submit via Canvas “Assignment 3”. Deadline for this assignment is Monday 27/4, 17:00.

Process design and the layout

Friday 24/4, start 10.00 via Zoom

Lecturer: Torbjörn Jacobsson

In this class, the focus of our attention is on process design and production layout. To ‘design’ is to conceive the looks, arrangement and workings of something before it is created. Design is also an activity that can be approached at different levels of detail. The layout of an operation’s facilities determines their physical positioning relative to each other and their aesthetic appearance. It involves deciding where to put all the facilities, desks, machines and equipment in the operations.

Literature: Slack et al, chapter 6-7

Assignment 4

Answer these sub-questions and submit via Canvas “Assignment 4”. Deadline for this assignment is Friday 4/5, 17:00.

Project management

Monday 4/5, start 10.00, viz Zoom

Lecturer: Ala Pazirandeh Arvidsson

During this lecture, we will discuss the challenges in project management. Project management is the activity of understanding the project environment, defining, planning, controlling and learning from projects.

Literature: Slack et al, chapter 19

 

Assignment 5

Answer the questions and submit via Canvas “Assignment 5”.

The deadline for this assignment is Monday 11/5, 17:00.

People in operations

Wednesday 6/5, start 13.15, via Zoom

Lecturer: Torbjörn Jacobsson

The manner in which an organization’s human resources are managed has a profound impact on the effectiveness of its operations function. This lecture looks especially at the elements of how the job characteristics influence the mental state and internal work motivation of the individuals.

Literature: Slack et al, chapter 9.

Assignment 6

Submit via Canvas “Assignment 6”. The deadline for this assignment is Friday 20/5, 17:00.

 

Capacity Management 

Wednesday 6/5, 14.15, via Zoom

Lecturer: Torbjörn Jacobsson

This class will discuss capacity management and the activity of understanding the nature of an operation’s demand and supply and coping with mismatches between them.

Literature: Slack et al, chapter 10-11.

Assignment 7

Submit via Canvas “Assignment 7”. Deadline for this assignment is Friday 20/5, 17:00.

 

Q and A, supervision of individual assignment 5

Friday 8/5, 10.00-13.00, via Zoom

Lecturer: Ala Pazirandeh Arvidsson

 

Q and A, supervision of individual assignment 5, 6, and 7 cont

Monday 11/5, 10.00-13.00, via Zoom

Lecturer: Torbjörn Jacobsson/ Ala Pazirandeh Arvidsson

 

Q and A, supervision of individual assignment 5, 6, and 7 cont II

Wednesday, 13/5, 13.15-16.00 , via Zoom

Lecturer: Torbjörn Jacobsson

Lean production and operations improvement 

Friday 15/5, start 10.00, via Zoom

Lecturer: Torbjörn Jacobsson

The lean production concept comes from the Toyota Production System (TPS) and has had a tremendous influence on all types of operations. Operations improvement and process organization is used in more types of organizations, and attempted in the public sector. We will work with selected examples of this and go through different presentations of the Lean-concept. Quality is one of the performance objectives and is a vital part of Lean. The experience and learning from Toyota and other excellent operations have proved that high quality does not only give the company a competitive advantage, but reduces the cost of rework, waste, complaints and return and most importantly, generates satisfied customers. During this class a fair amount of time will deal with the quality perspective.

Literature: Slack et al, chapter 15-17, Liker och Meier, D. (2006), The Toyota Way fieldbook: a practical guide for implementing Toyota´s 4Ps, McGrewHill.

 

Quality management 

Monday 18/5, start ca 10.00, via Zoom

Lecturer: Torbjörn Jacobsson

Quality management has always been an important part of operations management. This lecture deals with how quality management can contribute to improvement by making the changes to operations processes that lead to better outcomes for customers. Quality management is one main driver of improvement. Some operations managers believe that, in the long run, quality is the most important factor affecting the performance of an organization relative to its competitors.

Literature: Slack et al, chapter 17

Extra Q&A, if needed

Extra supervision, if needed Wednesday, 20/5, 13.15, Zoom)

 

Assignment 8

What would lean production mean to a service organization? Choose a service organization and translate the principles of lean production to fit the chosen organization. Focus on the operations part of the of the lean production model. Your task is first to show that you have understood the contents of lean production, as described in the course literature. Secondly, your ability to apply the principles of lean production to a new type of operation will be central for the judgment of your answer.

 

Submit via Canvas “Assignment 8”. Deadline for this assignment is Friday 29/5, 17:00.

 

Assignment 9

The Managing Partner of a Branding Partnership Company was describing her business.

‘It is about four years now since we specialized in the small to medium firms’ market. Before that we also used to provide brand consultancy services for anyone who walked in the door. However, within the firm, I think we could focus our activities even more. There seem to be two types of assignment that we are given. About 40 per cent is relatively routine. Typically, these assignments are conventional market research and focus group exercises. These activities involve a relatively standard set of steps that can be carried out by relatively junior staff. Of course, an experienced consultant is needed to make some decisions. Customers expect us to be relatively inexpensive and fast in delivering the service. Nor do they expect us to make simple errors; if we did this too often we would lose business. Fortunately, our customers know that they are buying a “standard package”. However, specialist agencies have been emerging over the last few years and they are undercutting us on price. Yet I still feel that we can operate profitably in this market.

The other 60 per cent of our work is for clients who require more specialist services, such as assignments involving major brand reshaping. These assignments are complex, large, take longer and require significant branding skill and judgement. It is vital that clients respect and trust the advice we give them in all “brand associated” areas such as product development, promotion, pricing and so on. Of course, they assume that we will not be slow or unreliable, but mainly it’s trust in our judgement backed up by hard statistics that is important to the client. This is popular work with our staff. It is both interesting and very profitable.’

(a) How different are the two types of business described (e.g. volume, variety, margin, order-winners)?

(b) It has been proposed that she split the firm into two separate businesses: one to deal with routine services and the other to deal with more complex services. What would be the advantages and disadvantages of doing this? Should market segmentation be matched by internal operations segmentation?

 

Submit via Canvas “Assignment 9”. Deadline for this assignment is Friday 29/5, 17:00.

 

Q and A, supervision of individual assignment 8, 9

Monday 25/5, 10.00-13.00, via Zoom

Lecturer: Torbjörn Jacobsson/ Ala Pazirandeh Arvidsson

The session are based on individual supervisions. The individual sessions are booked by the student via calendar in Canvas, see prepared booking-slots in the calendar.

 

Q and A, supervision of individual assignment 8, 9, cont

Wednesday 27/5, 13.00-16.00, via Zoom

Lecturer: Torbjörn Jacobsson/ Ala Pazirandeh Arvidsson

The session are based on individual supervisions. The individual sessions are booked by the student via calendar in Canvas, see prepared booking-slots in the calendar.

 

“Q&A” before the written take home exam

Friday 29/5, start 10.00, via Zoom

Lecturer: Torbjörn Jacobsson

During this lecture, it will be possible for students to get model answers on their individual assignment and ask questions regarding the upcoming written exam.