Course Logistics

Purpose of this video is to explain to you:

- The course objectives and the format

- The course material, in particular the text book

- The course outline

- The requirements to complete the course; in particular the two tracks

(a) an academic track

(b) a practitioner track

- and finally to tell you a little bit about myself

Personal Introduction

MBA core course: Operations Management: Quality and Productivity

Taught ~ 60 times ~ 4000 MBA students

McKinsey Ops Practice ~ 500 new associates

Research:

Operations Management, focus on Healthcare Management

Innovation tournaments and contests

Christian Terwiesch

terwiesch@wharton.upenn.edu

Andrew M. Heller Professor at the Wharton School

Senior Fellow Leonard Davis Institute for Health Economics

573 Jon M. Huntsman Hall

Philadelphia, PA 19104.6366

Course Objectives and Prerequisites

Objective of the course:

Understanding and improving business processes

Performance measures

How-to

Mix of industries: healthcare, food, automotive, computers, call centers, banking, etc

Requirements / Prerequisites:

There are no prerequisites for the course

Some modules require statistical knowledge (standard deviation, normal distribution)

If you want to take the course on the practitioner track, you need access to a business

Text Book

Course book

Cachon, Gerard, Christian Terwiesch, Matching Supply with Demand: An Introduction to Operations

Management, 3rd edition, Irwin - McGraw Hill, 2012 (ISBN 978-0073525204, 507 pages)

Book is recommended, though not required

$30 (heavily discounted) version of the book for Coursera

Separate video on how to get the Coursera version of this book

Course Outline

Introduction

1. Process analysis

2. Productivity

3. Product variety

4. Responsiveness

5. Quality

Each module has a homework assignment

At the end of the course, there will be a final exam

The Coursera Operations Project – An Alternative Way of Taking the Course

With Course Project Without Course

Project

With HW/Exam With Distinction Ops Certificate

Without HW/Exam Ops Certificate Audit