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OPIM 201 Business Processes An undergraduate business core course in the Lee Kong Chian School of Business, Singapore Management University.
Course Description How can a firm strengthen and maintain its competitive advantage in customer responsiveness, price, quality, and variety of products or services? This course offers concepts and methods to structure, manage, and improve a firm's recurring business processes to achieve this goal. These concepts and methods are as applicable to banks, grocery stores, and hospitals, for example, as to traditional manufacturing. This course is essential to students aspiring to become consultants, entrepreneurs, or general managers. They will learn how to manage the business processes of a firm, and how these processes affect and are affected by their business decisions. Some working knowledge of business processes is also indispensable to those interested in marketing, finance, and accounting, where the interface between these functions and operations in a firm is critical. Furthermore, an understanding of how firms become market leaders through effective business processes is important in investment careers. Click here for a recent syllabus.
Instructor Tel: 6828-0774 Email: myname@smu.edu.sg (replace myname with yflim) Office: 4038, Level 4, Lee Kong Chian School of Business
Course Activities and Projects
Debate (American versus Japanese Manufacturing): Students will be partitioned into two groups – one represents the American and the other the Japanese. They will debate about the strength and weaknesses of both countries’ manufacturing culture and practice.
Bucket Brigade Exercise: A few students will be invited to simulate order-picking operations using the bucket brigade policy in class. Other students will observe and record the performance of the bucket brigade policy, which will be compared with the traditional zone-picking policy. Pictures of simulation under both policies are shown below.
Project 1 (Survey): Students will form groups to do a survey on the supply chain strategy of a real company. They will identify the strength and weaknesses of the company’s supply chain.
Project 2 (Simulation Game): Students will form groups to play a computer simulation game in which each group is given some cash to run a company. Each group competes with other groups and the group that generates the highest profit will be the winner. A snapshot of the simulation is shown below.
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Zone-Picking: Jobs are processed from left to right. Work-in-process (papers on the table) accumulates in front of the slowest student (middle), while the downstream student (right) is idle. The line is severely out of balance. |
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Bucket Brigade: After converting to a bucket brigade, jobs are still processed from left to right. Work-in-process is now eliminated (no papers on the table!). Every student is constantly busy. The line tends to be balanced from job to job. |
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Simulation Game: |