BU.680.620 – Operations Management

Required Texts & Learning Materials

Text: Warren, G. (2025).Business Process Analysis. No cost.

Cases posted on Canvas: no cost.

a.    “Urgent Care Clinics: Standardizing Non-standard Medical Care,” Michael Koons & Graeme Warren

b.    “Caffè Antico Greco,” Jessie Kim, Jessica Martin & Graeme Warren

c.    “Punchbowl,” Graeme Warren under construction.

d.   Littlefield Simulation Exercise Material Software:

1.   AnyLogic. Download here. No cost.

2.   Microsoft Excel.

3.   Language models (free versions are fine, but suggest the use of https://lab.ai.jh.edu/ especially when running any of the autograder prompts – this will be discussed in the Zoom calls).

4.   Calculators for queueing, newsvendor, and inventory models (see Canvas). No cost.

5.   Hunch.tools or similar. No/low cost.

6.   Littlefield simulation game. Cost: ~$24.

Recommended Texts & Learning Materials

Case: HBSP Coursepack:https://hbsp.harvard.edu/import/1320515. Cost is $4.95 total.

“Lean Process Improvements in Cleveland Clinic,” Izak Duenyas, Case W87C95-PDF-ENG

Course Description

Within a manufacturing or service organization, operations provide the power necessary for orchestrating technology and resources in creating products and services to meet the needs of end consumers. Operations management, accordingly, consists of ideas for shaping and innovating an organization’s business model. This course provides a conceptual and actionable introduction to operations management and covers a wide range of topics, including operations strategy, process mapping and design, queuing theory, inventory management, lean manufacturing, and revenue management. By taking a process view of value-added functions that lead to an understanding of how to make operations design choices, students will acquire analytical and strategic thinking skills crucial for managing 21st-century operations.

Prerequisite(s)

BU.520.601 OR BU.913.610

Learning Objectives

By the end of this course, you should be able to:

1.   Understand the link between process characteristics and other strategic choices.

2.   Understand how to measure process efficiency and effectiveness.

3.    Identify bottleneck processes, understand variability.

4.   Apply tools and techniques for bottleneck analysis in a live and/or simulated environment.