M.S. in Supply Chain Management

This course enables you to better develop and sustain a company’s competitive advantage through effective supply chain management. You will develop an understanding of internal and external operations that support corporate level strategies and simultaneously coordinate with other functional areas. Concepts and tools used in operations and supply chain management are discussed and then implemented using a supply chain simulation to develop further understanding of the implications of decisions and applications.

In this course, you’ll gain a broad understanding and knowledge of important business analytic topics and how they can be used to support decision-making in all business areas, as well as government, education and agriculture. The course emphasizes the methods and procedures that are used to describe data, make predictions and enable decision-making. You will learn how data exploration results in a sequence of descriptive, predictive and prescriptive processes that result in new information, based on which better and more informed decisions can be made.

This course provides a broad understanding of financial accounting for managers who will be “customers” of financial information. The course focuses on providing an understanding of accounting from a user’s perspective and gaining insight into how economic events such as financing transactions, company investments and operating activities are recorded in financial statements.

In this course, you’ll explore the theory and practice of marketing management and will integrate the knowledge from various marketing sub-fields, including consumer behavior, marketing research and channels of distribution. The course will follow a four-stage learning approach including: 1) comprehensively reviewing and analyzing all aspects of marketing management, 2) learning tools for marketing problem analysis, 3) understanding how to apply core marketing concepts, theories and frameworks and 4) developing an original marketing plan for a new product launch.

Planning and Control Systems provide the framework and infrastructure necessary to guide decision makers. Basic and advanced planning and control tools are discussed and applied. These tools are then implemented through simulations to expand the understanding between the analytical methods and the practical application.

You will learn how well-known companies (like Toyota) have implemented continuous improvement approaches, such as Lean and Six Sigma, within their organizations. You will also apply what you learn practically and work to answer questions such as: How can I make improvement and agility part of everyday work? How do we develop and utilize the capabilities of my team to achieve new levels of performance? How can we build the confidence in my organization to tackle difficult situations and exceed customer expectations? This class provides new tools for your “toolbox” and explores techniques to maximize your organization’s results.

This course focuses on global aspects of supply chain management with primary emphasis on sourcing and distribution strategies. Specific issues include make versus buy decisions, supplier evaluation and selection, total cost of ownership, contracts and legal terms, negotiation, and purchasing ethics with emphasis on how these topics impact organizational performance. A significant portion of this course is a project/application that integrates supply chain topics.

M.S. in Supply Chain Management degree students must take this course near the end of their program.

* SCMA 839 serves as the capstone course for the program and must be completed near the end of the program of study.

This course focuses on the physical distribution activities in the marketing mix from the viewpoints of both providers and users of components of logistics systems. The course blends theoretical and practical applications used for planning the movement and storage of goods through the supply chain. Particular emphasis is placed on risks and opportunities of current and changing events that affect decision-making and the evolution of distribution systems.

Enterprise systems integrate information and decision tools across the functional areas of an organization. These systems play a significant role in decision-making in operations and supply chain management and provide the mechanism for integrating these decisions, as well as sharing data and information with other decision makers.

Project management involves managing people and resources to accomplish a new activity. This course provides an introduction to techniques that are used for planning and managing projects, from project initiation through implementation. You will learn a variety of tools and techniques that can be used for budgeting, planning and scheduling, risk management and project implementation.

In today’s turbulent and uncertain marketplace, organizations compete based on their dynamic capabilities of agility, flexibility, resilience and adaptability. Business leaders must be knowledgeable and capable of leveraging the advanced information and communication technology (ICT) for innovation to support smart operations. In this course, you will learn foundational components along with the most advanced new ICTs and how they are currently being used to operate, innovate and grow businesses. You will study new disruptive ICTs (Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, (X)R, IoT, Digital Manufacturing, Cloud Computing, Edge Computing, Software-defined Infrastructure, Drones, etc.) to explore their potential and actual roles in innovation and smart operation through digital transformation.

Simulation is the process of building a computer model of a system or a decision-making problem and experimenting with the model to obtain insight into the system’s behavior or to assist in solving the decision-making problem. This course addresses the simulation of business systems that are subject to uncertainty and risk. Upon completion of the course, you will be able to carry out the entire process of designing a simulation model, implementing it in appropriate software, executing the simulation, collecting and analyzing output data and using the results of the analysis to evaluate alternative decision scenarios.

There are three main categories of analytic tools: descriptive, predictive and prescriptive. Predictive analytics extends statistical and/or artificial intelligence methods to provide forecasting capability. In today’s environment, predictive analytics involves applying knowledge management to analyze large quantities of data. In this course, you will be exposed to the analytic methods and statistical tools that are commonly used for predictive analytics in business, enabling the organizations to use these methods and software to solve business problems. The risks associated with the handling of big data are also discussed.

Data mining applies quantitative analysis to support humans in identifying actionable information from large quantities of data. Actionable information is information that enables a business to make better decisions and improve their overall profits. This course focuses on how descriptive data mining has been successfully applied in business. Descriptive analytics involves initial examination of data, seeking to discover patterns and other knowledge. The course describes the tools commonly used in descriptive data mining and also address ethical and privacy issues related to the use of information obtained through data mining.

There are three main categories of analytic tools: descriptive, predictive and prescriptive. Prescriptive analytics focuses on the use of data from the other business analytics domains, such as descriptive and predictive analytics, to achieve strategic and operational objectives. This course focuses on how optimization techniques can be used to make decisions in a variety of business applications. The techniques covered include linear, integer and network models, sensitivity analysis, stochastic optimization, sequential decision making and two-objective optimization. The application of these techniques for solving real-size problems in businesses is emphasized. Several case studies related to topics such as financial planning, logistics, production planning and inventory management are discussed.