MS in Supply Chain Management - Courses

This 4-day course introduces the students to the Supply Chain program and provides an initial view of the purpose of the masters, i.e. the transition from traditional to digital supply chains. During the 4-days the students will experience a manual supply chain game which helps to familiarize them with the dynamics of the supply chain and the dynamic nature of information sharing across the supply chain. The 4-day Workshop concludes with a case competition where the students compete in teams during a live case study (see Appendix D for an example of the workshop content and format). The content of the workshop is such that this cannot be made available in an online format due the experiential component, i.e. the dynamic interactions of students and faculty.

This provides a holistic overview of the supply chains, and the various functions (e.g. Sourcing and Procurement; Manufacturing and Operations; Logistics and Distribution) and cross-functional processes (e.g. balancing supply and demand), that when integrated can provide firms with a sustainable competitive advantage.

This course provides an overview of the key elements of a successful logistics function that meets both customer and company objectives. Topics include an introduction to location analysis (warehouses and distribution centers) and network design, transportation management, inventory management, international logistics, logistics technology, and warehouse management.

Our world is becoming increasingly complex and complicated. Shrinking technology and product life cycles, emergence of hyper‐competition, increased demands on product/service variety and response times in combination with sustainability pressures are resulting in today’s business environment that is uncertain, volatile, complex and under a constant change. An ample of evidence is showing that companies that are winning in this environment are the ones with best-configured and managed supply networks. Purchasing and supply management is playing a pivotal role in overall organizational and supply network performance. This course has been designed in response to some of the most critical operational, tactical and strategic issues that companies are struggling with today. Students will be taken systematically through an entire process of designing sourcing strategies, supplier evaluation, and selection process, as well as design and execution of buyer-supplier relationship strategies. Throughout this process students will also learn basics of negotiations and contracting, supply risk management and costing techniques that will help them with their careers in purchasing and supply chain management. The course builds on exemplar cases from various industries; hence it is interactive and designed heavily around online class debates.

The term Industry 4.0 encompasses a promise of a new industrial revolution—one that marries advanced manufacturing techniques with the Internet of Things (IoT) to create a digital manufacturing enterprise that is not only interconnected, but communicates, analyzes, and uses information to drive further intelligent action back in the physical world.

This course gives an overview of additive manufacturing (also known as 3D Printing), the various approaches and applications of additive manufacturing. The course also highlights the various challenges of deploying additive manufacturing in a supply chain context.

Study of several data mining techniques with hands-on experience using medium data sets. Investigation of techniques for data integration. Industry focused review of most beneficial applications of data mining.

This provides a holistic view of how to design a distribution network, including the factors that influence the design. The various strategies relating to where inventories are held and how they are shipped to customers and consumers. The role of carriers and ‘last mile’ delivery issues. The importance of product and information flows, and the rise of the Digital Networks.

This workshop provides an intense overview and application of commercial negotiations practices, from both supplier and customer perspectives. If it is possible to replicate the face-to-face experience in an online environment, then this workshop could be moved ‘online’.

This provides a broad view of the opportunities for collaboration, internally, with customers and with suppliers, including the many layers of collaboration. It reviews the emerging technologies that enable and support collaboration. Finally, it considers the Regulatory / legal challenges which limit collaboration and the impact of geographical/cultural/ and legal jurisdictions on the ability to fully collaborate.

The course focuses on fundamental principles and role of transportation systems, and costing and pricing. Looks at motor carriers, railroads and airlines. Looks at transportation risk management and global transport planning and execution.

In this course, the students in teams, will work on applied projects (with local companies), taking their understanding from the previous courses in the master’s program and apply these to a real business problem.

This course focusses on bringing together all the major concepts covered in the master’s in SCM program and how each interconnect and relate to one another. Adopting a strategic perspective, the capstone looks at how organizations develop and implement a variety of supply chain strategies.

In this 4-day residential workshop, students will present the results of their applied projects, to the project sponsoring organizations, in the forms of a case competition.

Focuses on leading edge techniques used in developing a manufacturing strategy, inventory management, cycle time reduction, production scheduling ERP, JIT/Kanban, synchronous manufacturing, supply chain management and advanced manufacturing systems.

The course focuses on strategic sourcing in the global economy. It looks at the process of segmenting third-party external spend for ensuring that scarce procurement resources are focused on the most important categories. Spend analysis is used to establish which categories or commodities to focus on where the greatest impact can be made.

The course focuses on the key concepts of lean and leading cultures of continuous improvement. The course looks at how to engage others in the lean thinking transformation process. The course also looks at a broad range of lean tools and how to use these in a lean transformation.

Course focuses on how an IT system like ERP supports and integrates core business processes within an organization and across its supply chains. Format for the course will be a combination of lectures and in-class exercises using SAP's ERP system. It will also include a discussion of key ERP concepts and issues from functional, technical and implementation viewpoint. Course will include hands-on working experience (through simulation) in manufacturing and distribution using SAP in the following areas: Sales Order Process, Purchasing, MRP, Production Ordering, Accounting, and Forecasting. This course also investigates reasons why many ERP installations are considered “failures” and ways to circumvent these unfortunate outcomes, competing ERP platforms, and business intelligence tools available within SAP. To demonstrate understanding of course-related ERP content, students will experience a “real world” market simulation requiring knowledge derived from this course and previous courses. Data from this simulator will be used for data modeling and analytics. 

An introduction to understanding supply chain financial performance and management. The course will cover: the case for supply chain finance; working capital management; managing costs across the supply chain; managing inventory from a financial perspective; organizations involved in the supply chain financial ecosystem; value propositions and the options for supply chain finance; and cross-borders issues for global supply chain finance.

An introduction to the process, terminology, and most common data mining techniques. Features hands on exercises with a variety of the techniques for data preparation, visualization, performance evaluation, prediction and classification, cluster analysis and association rules. Includes a discussion of best practices for application selection and delivery.

Ethical decision making: utilitarian, virtue ethics, Kantian common good perspectives. A process for ethical decision making. Ethical topics specific to information processing. Free speech, content control, intellectual property, privacy and security. Regulatory approach. Politics of platforms. Intended and unintended consequences or algorithmic approach. 

Building web applications (with HTML, CSS, JavaScript); Advanced data driven web applications with D3, SVGE-graphics, JQuery. Visualization of popular data science / machine learning algorithms such as Bayes classifiers, k-mean clustering, network layout methods.

Big data sources, definitions, scales. Paradigms for doing science. Relational Database technology: Principles of relational databases, operations in relational databases (including an introduction to SQL), database design and discussion of normal forms, writing queries. MapReduce and Parallel / Distributed Algorithms: Map-Reduce model and programming, parallel and distributed query processing, No-SQL databases: Data organization at large scale, ACID and its costs, distributed consensus problem, current implementations (BigTable, LH*, DynamoDB, Pig, Spark, etc.) Analyzing graphs: representation and analysis of networks abstracted as graphs, PageRank.