Dr. Ron Lembke, Ph.D.
University of Nevada, Reno
Reaching me
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Email:
Phone:
WWW:
ronlembke@unr.edu
(775) 682-9164
http://business.unr.edu/faculty/ronlembke
When emailing, please include “701” and something like
“eMBA” in the subject line.
Don’t call my house, and I won’t call yours. Deal?
Who Are You? (This is Homework)
In an email, please tell me the following:
 Your name
 Major
 phone #’s to reach you at
Where From
Interests / Hobbies
Musical interests
 email address
 when you anticipate graduating
 any experience you have had that might be relevant to this
course
Efficient & Effective
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Efficiency: Doing things with the least use of resources
Effectiveness: Doing the right thing at the right time.
Value = Quality / $
What is Operations Management?
 “The design, operation, and improvement of the
systems that create and deliver the firm’s primary
products and services.” p. 6.
 Operations research / management science
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Applying quantitative methods to decision making
 Industrial Engineering
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Engineering discipline, includes human factors and
ergonomics.
 OM is a field of management that may use some tools
from OR/MS and IE.
Why OM is the most important area
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Marketing tells the world about our products
Sales gets people to buy our product
Finance makes sure we have the money to operate
Accounting keeps track of where money comes from and
goes
 Management keeps people on task, sets strategy and vision
 I/S makes sure everyone has the information they need to
do their jobs.
 Operations actually makes the thing we sell. Without
operations, you can’t have a company.
Why Do You Care?
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Satisfying Customers depends on Operations
You must understand and work in or with Operations:
 Finance: Depr, Cash Flow, Make vs. Buy
 Acctg: Cost estimates, Overhead, Inv valuation
 Mktg/Sales: What can be done?
 HR: job descr, standards, incentives
 IS: production, shipping, billing, receiving
 Goizueta at Coke: What do you do to sell more Coca-
Cola?
 How do you support the mission?
Operations as Service
Everybody’s in service
Core services: done correctly, customized to their needs,
delivered on time, priced competitively
Value-added services: make customers’ jobs or lives
Information on product – data, specs
Sales support – demo product trying to sell
Problem solving – help internal, external customer
Field support – replace parts quickly
Course Outline:
Test 1 – Strategy and Analytics
1. What is Operations Management?
2. Strategic Role of Operations and Sustainability
3. Forecasting: How much stuff do we need?
4. Capacity Management: how to make it and how
much capacity to have? When add more?
5. Project Management: Getting it done on time
Test 2-Manufacturing and Service
Processes
6. Designing a production process
7. Services: randomly arriving customers
Queueing Theory
9. Material Requirements Planning - scheduling
production and getting enough parts
A. Linear Programming: Mathematically optimal
decisions
10. Quality Management and Six Sigma
Test 3: Supply Chain Processes and
Analytics
11. Inventory management: how much stuff, and where?
12. Lean production, aka Just In Time
13. Global sourcing and procurement
14. Location Selection: where to build?
This is NOT a comprehensive final!
Only over section 3.
Test Preparations
 Tests are roughly 75% mathematical
 Some questions where I might ask you to explain where
you have seen an idea being used, or where it might
work well.
 In that case, what do you think? Or have you seen?
 Practice problems are supposed to be good preparation
 I suggest you do them, and then look at the solutions
I’ve given you.
“Case Studies”
 Not a major source of your grade
 Somewhat detailed, relatively recent example of our
concepts at work
 Read or watch the material, and offer you’re your
responses
Lectures
 It’s my personal opinion that if I’m going to teach you,
I have to explain it in my own words, verbally.
 PC/Mac:You can watch the ppt with audio shows like
this one, and use the Flash viewer
 iPhone/iPad: download the mp3 files and listen to them,
and look along at the PDF files of the lectures
 You can read transcripts of the lectures
 You can ignore the PPTs altogether
 But not everything in the lectures is in the book
 So you might want to at least look through them
Case Study
 Tell me about a way you think a company could
improve its operations (either its effectiveness or
efficiency).
 This must be based on a real company
 It could be one you work at, your spouse, your friend,
your parent, your child, or just one you’ve observed as a
customer
 It does not have to have data, but if you can ballpark
things as best as possible, that is better than nothing
 Done in groups, due at the end of the semester
 You will need to make a PPT with audio presentation
Benihana Case Study
 Read the HBSP case.
 Tell me how Benihana’s operational decisions
contributed, both positively and negatively, to their
success
 How long? Let say 3-4 pages-ish.
Continuous Improvement
IGNORE YOUR TEETH,
AND THEY’LL GO AWAY
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It used to be you had to be “good enough”
Now, you must be looking for ways to make your
customer happy, and meet their future needs
If you aren’t someone else is, and is going to take
your business