Operations Management

Spring Term 2018

Dates: February 22, March 8, 15, 22, April 19, 26, May 24

Time: 1.30 pm – 5.15 pm

Room: 253, Main Building

Professor: Helmut Dietl (helmut.dietl@business.uzh.ch)

TEACHING PHILOSOPHY
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime!
Chinese Proverb

DATES & TOPICS

February 22 Introduction & Project Management

Literature: Chase/Jacobs Chapter 1 & 4
Fitzsimmons et al. Chapter 1 & 16

March 8 Operations Strategy

Literature: Chase/Jacobs Chapter 2
Fitzsimmons et al. Chapter 2
Case Studies: Operations Strategy at Galanz
American Connector Company

March 15 Process Analysis I

Literature: Chase/Jacobs Chapter 11
Fitzsimmons et al. Chapter 7
Simulation: Operations Management Simulation: Process Analytics

March 22 Process Analysis II

Literature: Chase/Jacobs Chapter 11
Fitzsimmons et al. Chapter 7

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Case Studies: CreativeCalligraphyInvitations.com: A Production Process Analysis
Exercise
Body Scans and Bottlenecks: Optimizing Hospital CT Process Flow
.
April 19 Quality Management
Literature: Chase/Jacobs Chapter 13
Fitzsimmons et al. Chapter 6

April 26 Inventory & Yield Management

Literature: Chase/Jacobs Chapter 20
Fitzsimmons et al. Chapter 11 & Chapter 15

May 24 Managing Waiting Lines

Literature: Chase/Jacobs Chapter 10
Fitzsimmons et al. Chapter 12 & Chapter 13

June 13 Exam 11am-12noon

COURSE MATERIALS

Textbooks:
Chase, R. B. & Jacobs, F. R. (2013). Operations & Supply Chain Management, 14th
edition, McGraw-Hill.
Fitzsimmons, J. A., Fitzsimmons, M. J., & Bordoloi, S. (2014) Service Management,
Operations, Strategy, and Information Technology. 8th edition, McGraw Hill

Case Studies & Online Simulation

Students can purchase the case studies and online simulation license from Harvard
Business Online (HBS). Payments must be by credit card. The process works as follows:
1. Please go to the website http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/access/77023579
2. Register with your username and choose a password. After logging in you will find a
list of my courses. Operations Management at USI contains the materials for your
course.
3. You need at least version 4 of Adobe Acrobat Reader, which you can download at
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html.

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4. If you want to purchase all course materials click on „ADD ALL ITEMS TO CART“.
You can also purchase items individually and add them to your shopping cart. Go to
Checkout. Note your Web-ID-Number. If the selected course materials do not appear
automatically for download you have to login again under „My courses“ (see 1. above).
5. Now, there should be a download link in your list of course materials to download the
case studies (sealed electronic download). You need your username and password to
download the documents. The username is the same as the one you used for your
registration. The username is also your password for the download.
6. Now you will have access to the purchased materials for 30 days. I recommend that
you print out the documents immediately after downloading them by using the “Print”
icon of your Acrobat Reader (If you try to print out via the menu the printed pages will
be empty).
7. If you have questions or technical problems, please contact Harvard Business School
Publishing by phone at 1-800-810-8858 or +1-617-783-7700 or by email at
techhelp@hbsp.harvard.edu. Have your Web-ID-Number ready.

Case Studies (C) and Simulation (S) for this course

Nr. Art Titel ID
1 C Operations Strategy at Galanz #910D05
2 C American Connector Company #693035
3 S Operations Management Simulation: Process Analytics #3291
CreativeCalligraphyInvitations.com: A Production Process
4 C #W88C37
Analysis Exercise
Body Scans and Bottlenecks: Optimizing Hospital CT Process
4 C #KEL592
Flow

OVERVIEW
The course uses lectures, online-simulations and case study analysis to teach advanced
methods of Operations Management for future executives. The main objective is to show
how companies gain and sustain competitive advantages over their rivals through
effective and efficient Operations Management.
Operations management is the area of management, which is concerned with designing
and controlling the production of goods or services. Based on a company’s competitive and
business strategy, operation managers develop and control the process of transforming
inputs (e.g. raw materials, labor, information, energy) into outputs (good and services).
Operations Management consists of numerous subfields. This course focuses on the
following key areas of operations management: operations strategy, process analysis,
quality management, project management, waiting line management, inventory
management and yield management.
Based on the firm’s resources and capabilities, operations strategy transforms the overall
corporate and competitive strategy into a more precise plan of how the business will
operate in order to achieve its objectives. For example, operations strategy involves the
allocating the firm’s resources, choosing the competitive dimensions of products and
services and defining order winners.

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The main objective of process analysis is to calculate capacity, utilization, throughput
times and cycle times of the company’s processes and to identify bottlenecks. Process
analysis enables operation managers to improve and optimize the company’s processes.
Quality management designs, controls and improves the production process so that all
products and services meet their required specifications. Modern tools of quality
management include methods such as Quality Function Deployment, Poka-Yoke and
Statistical Process Control (SPC).
Many tasks, such as the construction of a building, the development of a video game and
consulting of a client, are unique and temporary and therefore have the characteristics of
projects. Project management applies skills, methods and techniques to manage a project
from conception through completion.
Waiting line management optimizes the trade-off between waiting costs and costs of
service capacity by using the insights from waiting psychology and the mathematical
models of queuing theory.
As a component of supply chain management, inventory management supervises the
purchase, delivery and storage of non-capitalized assets, or inventory, and stock items
while yield management tries to allocate the right type of capacity to the right type of
customer at the right price and right time to maximize revenue or yield.