Operations Management: Organization and Analysis Course Syllabus

Overview: This course provides a practical, numbers-driven approach to operations management, designed for managers and aspiring analysts. You'll learn how to analyze processes, identify inefficiencies, and apply proven frameworks like Lean and Six Sigma to improve performance across service and manufacturing industries. The curriculum spans five core modules with hands-on exercises and real-world case studies, followed by a final project. With a total time commitment of approximately 40 hours over 5 weeks, this course balances theory and application to build actionable skills in process optimization, capacity management, inventory control, and quality improvement.

Module 1: Operations and Process Analysis

Estimated time: 8 hours

• Introduction to operations management
• Process flow analysis
• Performance metrics
• Mapping and evaluating business processes

Module 2: Bottlenecks and Capacity Management

Estimated time: 8 hours

• Identifying bottlenecks in production systems
• Capacity utilization and constraints
• Throughput analysis
• Analyzing production lines for efficiency

Module 3: Inventory and Flow Time Management

Estimated time: 8 hours

• Inventory basics and management principles
• Little’s Law and flow time calculations
• Optimizing flow time for stability
• Balancing inventory and process flow

Module 4: Quality and Process Improvement

Estimated time: 8 hours

• Lean principles and tools
• Six Sigma fundamentals
• Root cause analysis
• Applying quality tools to real or simulated issues

Module 5: Matching Supply and Demand

Estimated time: 8 hours

• Understanding variability in operations
• Demand forecasting techniques
• Designing responsive operations
• Building models to manage uncertainty

Module 6: Final Project

Estimated time: 10 hours

• Conduct a full process analysis of a real or simulated operation
• Identify inefficiencies using capacity, flow, and inventory metrics
• Propose and justify process improvements using Lean, Six Sigma, or forecasting models

Prerequisites

• Familiarity with basic business concepts
• Working knowledge of Excel (for modeling exercises)
• Basic quantitative reasoning skills

What You'll Be Able to Do After

• Analyze business processes and pinpoint inefficiencies
• Apply Lean and Six Sigma tools to streamline operations
• Use capacity, flow, and inventory strategies to improve performance
• Understand how operations contribute to customer value delivery
• Build models to manage variability and align supply with demand