Faculty
Christer Karlsson

Course Coordinator
Christer Karlsson

Open to all, the course is qualitative

Organizations are increasingly understood as key and supporting processes that produce value in a value adding stream or flow. Process management is about how organizations produce goods and services. Operations produce goods and services by managing processes to change the state or condition of something to produce outputs. Banks will typically process customers and information, factories will typically process material, hospitals will typically process customers in terms of patients, consultants will typically process information and customers, and shipping companies and ports will typically process goods in transport. Transforming resources are facilities and staff. Process management deals with planning, choosing resources, organizing, controlling and auditing the processes. It is all about the value creation in the line organization but little about the administrative routines of indirect functions.

The course takes a starting point in describing the organization as a transforming system, i.e. in an input - transformation - output process perspective. The course is designed around the textbook so – following the introduction – the question arises of how processes can be designed, managed and controlled. Different operations processes are characterized in volume, variety, variation and visibility, four variables that are especially important in designing the production system. Performance objectives such as quality, speed, dependability, flexibility, and cost are analyzed for different kinds of operations such as hospitals, manufacturing plants, transport services, and retailing. Trade-offs and moving performance frontiers are discussed. Operations are linked to business strategies and competitive factors identified. Alternative processes, flows and layouts are analyzed. To monitor processes, planning and control is raised as a core theme of the course and includes tools like capacity planning, inventory planning, enterprise resource planning, lean operations and Just-In-Time. Quality assurance, planning and control are other important areas.

The structure of the course follows the textbook for simplicity purposes divided in fourteen sessions with two lessons each time following an introductory session. Teaching is a combination of lecturing, group work and presentations, and student and teacher driven discussion. The teaching style is informal.

The students will develop their competences in analyzing complex issues and an ability to focus on managerial dilemmas. Many decision-making situations in the student’s future career will challenge an evaluation of what is relevant and irrelevant. The students will expand this competence with the focus on managing the value adding processes or operations of the organization. This involves many strategic choices that will influence the effectiveness of the operations beyond simple efficiency.

More specifically, the student will after the course:

Individual oral examination on all material covered in the course, based on a three pages written synopsis, which is to be handed in two weeks prior to the exam. The content of the synopsis is chosen by the student. It is not graded and may be written with one or two fellow students, and it serves as a starting point for the discussion. Duration including marking: 20 minutes.

Book:

Articles: