Course description
This course will provide students with a generalized approach to designing, operating, and improving the activities of service and manufacturing businesses. Students will compare theory with actual operating businesses, and develop solutions to real-world problems. Topics include: flowcharting, processes, quality, forecasting, capacity planning, layout and job design, inventory systems, scheduling, and supply chain management. Students are expected to have basic Excel skills.
Course content
- Information and Material Flow
- using flowcharts to describe and analyze the flow of information, people, and materials within a business.
- Product Design and Process Selection
- nature of service and manufacturing, design of the system, process selection and improvements.
- Total Quality Management
- cost of quality, quality specification, W.E. Deming, continuous improvement, TQM principles and tools, statistical process control.
- Forecasting and Capacity Planning
- simple forecasting methods, time series analysis, simple linear regression, analysis of forecasting error, volume versus capacity, economies of scale.
- Facility Location and Layout
- issues of facility location, process / product / group technology / fixed position / retail / office layouts.
- Job Design, Work Measurement,
- behavioural and physical considerations, methods, measurement.
- Project Management
- defining a project, organization, critical path method, Gantt charts, crashing.
- Aggregate Planning and Inventory Systems
- production planning issues and methods, Master Production Schedule, MRP, MRPII and ERP; ABC, Economic Order Quantity, Re-order Point, and Fixed Period Systems.
- Scheduling
- job shop scheduling, priority, shop-floor control, personnel scheduling.
- Logistics, Materials Management and Purchasing, Just-In-Time Systems
- integrated management, purchasing and sourcing, materials handling.
Learning activities
Lecture and discussion, videos, computer assignments, business visits and tours.
Means of assessment
| Assigned Work: |
|
| Assignments |
10% |
| Cases and Term Project |
35% |
| Class Participation |
05% |
| Midterm Examination |
20% |
| Final Examination |
30% |
| |
100% |
Students must obtain a combined mark of at least 50%
on the examination components of the assessments to receive a passing grade for
the course.
Students may conduct research as part of their coursework in this class. Instructors for the course are responsible for ensuring that student research projects comply with College policies on ethical conduct for research involving humans, which can require obtaining Informed Consent from participants and getting the approval of the Douglas College Research Ethics Board prior to conducting the research.
Learning outcomes
At the end of the course, the successful student should be able to:
- describe and contrast service and manufacturing operations;
- describe the information and materials flow in a business;
- conduct a simple forecast and estimate capacity for a small business;
- propose a facility location, design a layout, and analyze jobs for a small business;
- plan and manage a simple project using basic project management tools;
- describe and contrast several inventory systems;
- describe the concepts of the supply chain;
- analyze the operations of a small business and propose process improvements;
- describe the concepts of TQM, continuous improvement and solve simple SPC problems;
- use a computer spreadsheet to solve problems.
Textbook materials
Textbooks and Materials to be Purchased by Students
- Stevenson, W.J., Operations Management, McGraw-Hill, Latest Edition or comparable text.
- Department approved calculator.