This course will teach you how to analyze and improve business processes, be it in services or in manufacturing. You will learn how to improve productivity, how to provide more choice to customers, how to reduce response times, and how to improve quality.
Week 1
Welcome to the first week of the course!
Please make sure to watch the three introduction videos. The first two have academic content in them. The third introduction session is logistical in nature and talks about the format of the course, the book, prerequisites, and other items from the course syllabus:
Following the introduction, week 1 also includes the first three lectures of Module 1: Process Analysis. The other lectures for Module 1 are in the second week. Hence, there is no homework assignment for week 1.
There are no homework assignments for this first week. The rest of Module 1 will be released in week 2. The first homework assignment will also be made available at that time and is then due on October 15.
After (and I emphasize "after") you have done all the work, treat yourself to a fun desert by clicking on the following video
After you have completed all lectures, please click on the “Practice Problems” link and take a look at the questions posted there. Please note that the answers for the practice problems are also posted there, just in a separate pdf file. I strongly discourage you to look at the solutions too quickly – spend at least 10 minutes per questions instead of rushing to the solution immediately.
Then, you are ready for the first homework. Click on Homework Assignment. There, you will be able to download a pdf outlining the problems for Homework 1. Answer these questions and write down the solutions (probably best to use paper and pencil). Then, click on Homework Submission to submit your answers. This homework (as all others) is worth 10 points. Each question has an equal weight in a homework.
Please note that you have multiple attempts to submit the homework assignments. Business questions are typically not as concise as Math questions and so we might differ in our interpretation of the question and/or assumptions we make. We will provide some hints if you get a question wrong. The purpose of the homework assignments is to reinforce learning, not to separate between good students and bad students.
Created Fri 28 Sep 2012 9:09:23 AM PDT Last Modified Fri 28 Sep 2012 9:38:33 AM PDT
Announcements
Welcome to Week 2
Dear Class,
We are entering the second week of our course. The course web-site is updated and you will now see “Week 2” on the Navigation bar. Please follow the link and work through the lectures, practice problems, and homework assignments. You will find the practice problems and the solutions under "Practice Problems" on the navigation bar and you will find the homework assignments under "Homework Assignments". Note that you will have to go to "Homework Submission" to submit your answers.
Please only attempt the practice problems and the homework assignments after you are done with the new video lectures posted this week (i.e., all video lectures of Week 1 and Week 2). The material of Week 1 alone will only be enough to get you through the first homework question.
Also, please allow me to respond to a couple of questions / suggestions that we encountered on the forum: - Downloading of videos: we have now made it easier to download videos, as opposed to just streaming them (go to “Download Lectures” on the navigation bar) - Subtitles / caption: All videos now have sub-titles (please note that you have to activate them by clicking on “cc” to the lower right of the video stream) - Downloading of course materials: you will now find links to the Powerpoint and the Excel files that I used to generate the lectures (go to “Course Materials” on the navigation bar) - Book: some folks have complained about the high price of the text-book. Please note that (a) the course is fully self-contained and the book is only needed if you want to go beyond what we do in class (b) you can rent the book at Amazon for $50 and you can get it used for around $30-$50
Finally, let me encourage you to take the pre-course survey by clicking on “Pre-Course Survey” on the navigation bar. This should not take more than two minutes and will provide us with a better sense of our community.
With those announcements made, we are now ready for week 2 of the course.
Best
Christian
Fri 28 Sep 2012 12:56:00 PM PDT
Official Launch of "An Introduction to Operations Management"
Dear Class
This message officially launches our Coursera course “An Introduction to Operations Management”. Welcome! We have a lot of work ahead of us and so let’s roll up the sleeves and get to work.
Here is what you should get done this week: - Click on "Week 1" (in the navigation bar on the left). There, you can find with detailed instructions for what to do in the first week of class. - Make yourself familiar with the site – we are just a couple of hours after launch, so many more things will be coming up. Since there is no homework this week, you can ignore the "Homework Assignments" and "Homework Submission" in the navigation bar for now. Over the next days, I will upload some practice problems, the slides for the first module, excel files, and other content. - Feel free to come to the Discussion Forum. Meet fellow students and get engaged in class. In the prelaunch time (Friday until today), the forum had brought some technical issues with the video lectures to our attention. These are fixed now.
I hope you have a great time in this course! Let’s get started.
Best
Christian
Mon 24 Sep 2012 3:42:00 AM PDT
Site is Live
Dear Class
This is the moment we have been waiting for. I am happy to let you know that our course “An Introduction to Operations Management” is now LIVE on Coursera! We are still three days from the official launch of class (Monday, September 24). We put the site live today, so that you have some extra time to look around the site, meet some of your fellow students in the discussion forum, check out the syllabus, and maybe even watch a lecture.
More specifically, here are some things you might want to do when you get to the site: - Click on "Week 1" (in the navigation bar on the left). There, you can find with detailed instructions for what to do in the first week of class (which, by the way, has no homework!!). I will follow this process for the subsequent five weeks of class as well. - Since there is no homework this week, you can ignore the "Homework Assignments" and "Homework Submission" in the navigation bar for now. Also, I have not yet uploaded the first set of practice problems. - Feel free to come to the Discussion Forum. I have seen in other Coursera courses that the first days of the course tend to be pretty actively used to form study groups and to meet fellow students. - You will also find the official course syllabus in the navigation bar on the left.
I will send out an official launch email on Monday. I hope you have a great time in this course!
Best
Christian
Fri 21 Sep 2012 11:44:00 AM PDT
Welcome to Class
Welcome to my Coursera Course “An Introduction to Operations Management”. We are still a couple of days away from our first day of class (Monday, September 24), but we might as well get used to the thought that the course will start soon.
So, here are a couple of administrative announcements: - The course has five modules, a short introduction, and a short conclusion. This content will be made available to you over the next six weeks. At the end of each module, there is a mandatory homework assignment. - The textbook “Matching Supply with Demand, An Introduction to Operations Management” that I wrote together with my colleague Gerard Cachon is useful, yet entirely optional. All content of the course will be available online. - We currently have close to 60,000 students enrolled in this course. Please forgive me that I cannot respond to email questions or comments (this would make for a fun homework assignment: “imagine that 1% of the students send in an email each day and that it takes 2 minutes per email to write a response”…) - The course will go live, as planned, on Monday next week
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