Operations Management Reflect and Describe Which Key

Operations Management

Reflect and describe which key concepts and topics in this course have made you a stronger candidate to enter the business world.

This was one of the most valuable courses I have ever taken in my academic career as it blended the practical, pragmatic aspects of supply chain management with the powerful frameworks and concepts of Six Sigma, Statistical Process Control, demand management, supply chain management and operations management. The key concepts and topics that made me a stronger candidate entering the business world include understanding the buyer-supplier relationship, how to measure it both from an efficiency and quality standpoint, and how to plan for contingences (Srinivasan, Mukherjee, Gaur, 2011). In addition the many insights gained of how to use the SCOR Model for optimizing supply chain performance, in addition to its use for mitigating risk across diverse supplier relationships (Li, Su, Chen, 2011) will be invaluable for the long-term. The focus on modeling business processes and aligning market demand to the overall structure, scope and direction of a supply chain will also be invaluable (Verdouw, Beulens, Trienekens, van der Vorst, 2011).

Managing suppliers to the highest quality levels possible will also be critically important in my career. The lessons learned on using Six Sigma as a means to capture and track process performance, while also keeping the entire investigative process centered on the customer (Xie, Wang, Lai, 2011) was one of the most valuable lessons learned. The biggest challenge for supply chain professionals in the 21st century will be two-fold: keeping a supply chain management process demand-driven and focused on quality over cost.

2. Discuss how this course has affected you in your professional development as a student and as a person as well as encouraging you on your academic path.

The course made what was once unfamiliar and intimidating now easily reachable and understandable, turning from theoretical information to practical knowledge. From a professional development standpoint the lessons learned in modeling supply chains to assess their stability, a point made in many of the readings and in cited analyses (Ip, Chan, Lam, 2011) combined with the focus on ensuring supply chain processes stray demand-driven (Verdouw, Beulens, Trienekens, van der Vorst, 2011) is critical for any supply chain practitioner.