Course Outline

A study of the challenges and opportunities facing managers of the operational functions of business, the value-added areas where resources are transformed into goods and services. The wide-ranging implications and applications of the concept of employee/team driven, customer-centered continuous improvement will be examined, as well as Total Quality Management principles. The study of operations management will involve some complexity as various quantitative management tools are examined and applied.

Rationale

• Operations management is an essential element of any business, whether it provides a product or service to its customers.
• The field is both evolving and growing. This course is an introduction to the field of operations management.
• The topics covered include both strategic issues and practical applications.
• Specific aspects of operations management to be considered are forecasting, product and service design, capacity planning, management of quality and quality control, inventory management, scheduling, supply chain management, and project management.

Measurable Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this course, the student will be able to:

• Describe the role of operations in supporting an organization’s competitive priorities.
• Apply mathematical and statistical techniques and appropriate decision-making criteria to solve operations problems such as resource allocation, capacity planning, facility location, forecasting, inventory control, project management, etc.
• Critically evaluate the appropriateness of a company’s operations management policies and practices with respect to the Christian worldview.
• Integrate biblical principles within the field of operations.

Course Assignment

Textbook readings and lecture presentations

Course Requirements Checklist

Before working through the checklist outlined in the Course Overview, the student should review the Liberty University curriculum.

All Discussions Sessions (4)

Discussions are collaborative learning experiences. Therefore, there will be 4 Discussions in this course divided across all 8 modules. The student will create a thread of at least 250 words in response to the discussion prompts. In the following module, the student will post 2 replies to the threads of classmates, and each reply must have a minimum of 150 words. The student will cite at least 3 sources for each thread and 2 for each reply.

All Homework Assignments (15)

The student will complete 15 Homework Assignments using Connect. Included in the assignments are various quizzes that are designed to prepare the student for the exams. At the end of the assigned module, Connect will automatically grade all of the assignments. All assignments will be conducted in Connect, not in the textbook (though the homework is based on the material in the textbook).

PowerPoint Presentation Assignment

For this assignment, you will create a professional-looking PowerPoint presentation on an operations management topic covered in this course. The scenario is that your supervisor has assigned you the task of presenting a 30-minute training session on this topic. You need to research your topic and prepare an engaging PowerPoint that would be used as a visual aid for your presentation. This assignment must contain a minimum of 10 content slides with speaker notes and four citations from credible sources.

Whole Quizzes (4)

The student will complete 4 quizzes in this course. Each quiz is online, open-book/open-notes, and is comprised of 25 true/false and multiple-choice questions. The student will have 45 minutes to complete each quiz.