MG401      Half Unit
Operations Management for Management Consultancy

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

Requisites

Additional requisites:

There is a pre-assignment that is due in early January. The specification of the pre-assignment will be posted to Moodle on the last day of Autumn term. Note that the pre-assignment is compulsory and cannot be accepted late.

Operations Management (OM) is concerned with the processes by which organisations produce goods and services. This course is designed for students having an interest in operations management who may be considering a career in management consultancy. It is not a course in management consultancy.

The course covers nine topics: (1) Process Flow Analysis, (2) Bottleneck Analysis, (3) The Toyota Production System, (4) Inventory Management, (5) Assembly Line Balancing, (6) Critical Path Method, (7) Quality Management for Services—with an emphasis on Quality Management in Healthcare, (8) Scheduling, and (9) Forecasting. The course is structured in three parts. Part I is called 'Cases' and is based around a set of 5 readings: three Harvard Business School cases and two articles. Part II is called 'Techniques'. Part III is called 'The Goal', which takes place during the final 2-hour session, and consists of an in-depth discussion of the book, The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement, by E.M. Goldratt and J. Cox.

12 hours of seminars and 16 hours of lectures in the Winter Term.
2 hours of lectures in the Spring Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.

In its Ethics Code, LSE upholds a commitment to intellectual freedom. This means we will protect the freedom of expression of our students and staff and the right to engage in healthy debate in the classroom.

In addition to the pre-assignment students will have six assignments throughout the term covering the material in the course and will be expected to work as a group on each assignment. The problems comprising each assignment will be discussed in the seminar classes, and each student will be individually responsible for answering all the problems for each assignment.

(1) Case: 'National cranberry cooperative (abridged)'
(2) Case: 'Toshiba: Ome works'
(3) Case: 'Toyota Motor Manufacturing, U.S.A., Inc.'
(4) Article: 'Controlling variation in health care: a consultation from Walter Shewhart'
(5) Article: -‘Distinguishing between common cause variation and special cause variation in a manufacturing system’
(6) Book: The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement, E.M. Goldratt and J. Cox.

Exam (100%), duration: 120 Minutes in the Spring exam period