Topics in Operations and Supply Chain Management
Summer, 2010
Instructor:
施春明, 助理教授, 博士生导师
School of Business and Economics, Wilfrid Laurier University
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Email: cshi@wlu.ca or vcmshi@yahoo.com
Time:
Location:
8:30am-12:30pm from Mondays – Thursdays, May 3rd – 20th
To Be Assigned
1. Course Overview & Objectives
World-class organizations build sustainable competitive advantage by effectively
planning and successfully managing their operations and supply chains. This course will
introduce you to some foundational concepts as well as selective research topics in
Operations Management (OM) and Supply Chain Management (SCM).
The first portion of the course focuses on OM from the perspective of a single firm,
where topics include operations strategy, project management, and the classical
newsvendor model and its various extensions. The first portion also serves as a
foundation to the second portion of the course, which focuses on SCM from the
perspective of multiple firms working together delivering goods and/or services to
consumers. The topics in the second portion include supply chain coordination utilizing
different incentive-alignment mechanisms, and the operations/finance interface, in
particular the linkage between OM/SCM performance and financial performance.
Upon completing this course, you are expected to:

Understand the strategic role of OM and SCM in the firm,

Understand how OM and SCM interact with other business functions, and

Develop research ability in OM and SCM.
2. Course Resources

Textbook: Supply Chain Science by Dr. Wallace J. Hopp

Lecture Notes

Selected Research Tutorials and Papers
Remark: all course resources are free and available from the instructor.
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3. Course Evaluation Components
Class Contribution
Group Presentation
Research Paper Critique
Individual Assignment 1
Individual Assignment 2
Group Research Project
10%
10%
10%
15%
15%
40%
3.1 Class Contribution: 10%
The instructor would like to see value-added contribution, not just making spurious
comments to be heard. Please use your NAME CARD in EVERY CLASS so I can
associate your name with your contribution.
3.2 Group Presentation: 10%
This is when one or two groups of 2 students use the first ten or twenty minutes of the
class to share a recent OM and/or SCM related story from the media. The requirements
are simple:
1) Pick a date for doing the presentation; first come, first serve.
2) Both group members must speak (4-6 minutes per).
3) You can use PowerPoint or other media if you want; but it is not required.
3.3 Research Paper Critique: 10%
You need to choose a research paper first. Then you write a two-page critique where you
summarize the original contributions, identify the strength and weakness, and propose
possible extensions.
3.4 Individual Assignment 1 and 2: 30%
The first assignment will be assigned on May 5th and due on May 11th. The second
assignment will be assigned on May 12th and due on May 19th.
3.5 Group Research Project: 40%
Each group will consist of 2 or 3 members. The research project will relate to the
newsvendor model, supply chain coordination and operations/finance interface. The goal
is to have a research idea and some initial results. The instructor will be more than happy
to work with interested students to have their work published.
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4. Course Prerequisites
Students should understand the basics of statistics, calculus, optimization, OM, and SCM.
5. Tentative Course Coverage:
Session
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
Date
May 3rd
May 4th
May 5th
May 6th
May 10th
May 11th
May 12th
May 13th
May 17th
May 18th
May 19th
May 20th
Topics
Introduction to OM
Operation Strategy
Project Management
Newsvendor Model (1)
Newsvendor Model (2)
Introduction to SCM
Supply Chain Coordination (1)
Supply Chain Coordination (2)
Supply Chain Coordination (3)
Operations/Finance Interface (1)
Operations/Finance Interface (2)
Game Theory in Supply Chain Analysis
6. Detailed List of Research Tutorials and Papers
Case 1: The Great Nuclear Fizzle at Old Babcock &Wilcox.
Case 2: The Campus Wedding
Tutorial 1: Cachon G, 2003. Supply chain coordination with contracts. In de Kok AG,
Graves SC (Eds), Supply Chain Management: Design, Coordination and Operation.
Elsevier: North-Holland; 2003. p. 229-340.
Tutorial 2: Cachon G and Serguei Netessine, 2006. Game Theory in Supply Chain
Analysis. INFORMS.
Cachon, G., “The Allocation of Inventory Risk in a Supply Chain: Push, Pull, and
Advance-Purchase Discount Contracts,” Management Science, V. 50, N. 2, pp. 222-238,
2004.
Hau L. Lee. 2004. The Trip-A Supply Chain. Harvard Business Review.
Hendricks, K.B., Singhal, V.R., 2003. The effect of supply chain glitches on shareholder
value. Journal of Operations Management 21, 501–522.
Hendricks, K.B., Singhal, V.R., 2005. Association between supply chain glitches and
operating performance. Management Science 51, 695–711.
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Kabak IW, Schiff AI. Inventory models and management objectives. Sloan Management
Review 1978; 19; 53-59.
Khouja M. The single-period (news-vendor) problem: literature review and suggestions
for future research. Omega 1999; 27: 537-553.
Lee, Hau, V. Padmanabhan, and Seungjin Whang, “The Bullwhip Effect in Supply
Chains”, Sloan Management Review, pp. 93-102, Spring, 1997.
Maqbool Dada and Qiaohai Hu. Financing newsvendor inventory. Operations Research
Letters.
Shi CV, Chen B. Pareto-optimal contracts for a supply chain with satisficing objectives.
Journal of Operational Research Society 2007; 58: 751-760.
Youhua Frank Chen, Minghui Xu and Zhe George Zhang. A Risk-Averse Newsvendor
Model Under CVaR Decision Criterion. Operations Research.
Yue J, Chen B, Wang, M. Expected value of distribution information for the newsvendor
problem. Operations Research 2006; 54: 1128-1136.
Wu, O. Q., H. Chen, M. Z. Frank. 2005. What actually happened to the inventories of
American companies between 1981 and 2000. Management Science 51, 1015–1031.
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