Category: Guest Posts

Guest Post: An Experiential Learning Exercise for Teaching Line Balancing

Our Guest Post today comes from Brent Snider, senior instructor of Operations and Supply Chain Management at the University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business, and Nancy Southin, Assistant Professor at Thompson Rivers University.

Are you looking for an engaging way to teach assembly line balancing to your OM class but leery of the various games that consume significant class time and require the purchase of various materials such as Lego? We have developed a 30-minute experiential learning exercise that can help. It requires only a few minutes of photocopying, and can be done before any lecture content on line balancing is covered.

The exercise features a scenario in which a company is considering re-shoring their laptop production to improve their triple bottom line performance. Student groups are provided the required assembly tasks and then challenged to develop a task assignment that is physically feasible (i.e., satisfies precedence requirements), meets or exceeds expected daily demand, and minimizes the number of employees (stations) required. Groups must submit their solutions for review in front of the class.

Students are motivated to try their best by knowing that their design will be publicly peer reviewed, and also by a food prize for the group that develops the best design. Each submission is displayed on-screen and the class asked “how would this perform?” Through assessing the various submissions, students quickly discover potential pitfalls like exceeding cycle time, out of sequence tasks, and excessive employees. The instructor then facilitates a quick summary discussion, formalizing the “rules” for optimally balancing an assembly line.

Student surveys showed 96% of students recommended continued usage of the exercise and 92% believed the competition taught them how to determine a feasible solution for line balancing problems. Students who learned line balancing though this exercise were also found to have at least the equivalent learning as lecture based learners.

If you are looking for a low admin exercise that significantly improves student engagement when teaching line balancing, then this peer reviewed competition approach is for you. E-mail us at brent.snider@haskayne.ucalgary.ca and nsouthin@tru.ca and we will send you the full lesson plan!

 

Guest Post: Break-even Analysis: Excel Makes Algebra Obsolete

Our Guest Post today comes from Howard Weiss, who is Professor of Operations Management at Temple University. Howard has developed both POM for Windows and Excel OM for our text.

When I began to use Excel in my classes, my main objective was to make the computations easier for the students so that we could focus on the models, inputs and outputs. At this point though, I have changed my priorities and I think it is important for us as OM (or Finance or Stat) professors to help the students develop their Excel skills as best as we can in our courses. To that end, I have taken a different approach to teaching Breakeven Analysis.

In the past, I used to develop the Break-even point algebraically just as is done in Heizer/Render/Munson and just about every other OM or business textbook. At the computer lab I would have my students enter into Excel the Fixed cost, Variable cost, Price and then the formula for the break-even point F/(P-V).

Recently, I have instead used Goal Seek, rather than the formula, to have the students find the break-even point. Instead of entering the break-even formula, I have them create a cell for the number of units, a cell for the total revenue and a cell for the total cost based on the number of units. I think expressing the total cost and total revenue in Excel helps the student to better understand these two admittedly simply concepts. I then tell the students that instead of finding the number of units where TC = TR we will create a cell for the difference between the two and use Goal Seek to search for a difference of 0 between TC and TR. The spreadsheet for Example S5 (Supp. 7) in the textbook appears as follows, along with a capture of the Goal Seek window.

I think this approach gives the student a better understanding of both break-even analysis and Goal seek.

Guest Post: Productivity, Forecasting and Excel with Real Data

Our Guest Post today comes from Howard Weiss, who is Professor of Operations Management at Temple University. Howard has developed both POM for Windows and Excel OM for our text.

I often search the web for real data that I can use for forecasting, and just came across data from Lowes 10 – Year Financial Information report that can be used for both productivity and forecasting.

The report has 5 sections, with 2 that are of major interest to OM. The 1st is titled “Stores and People” and lists the productivity inputs and outputs of: (1)Number of stores; (2)Selling square feet; (3)Number of employees; (4)Total customer transactions; (5)Average ticket.

The next section includes the net sales. I have the students perform several exercises using these data. Here are 5 years of past data.

The Exercises

Exercise 1 – Data integrity:  For each of the years the net sales should be equal to the anticipated net sales (my definition) given by the average ticket multiplied by the number of transactions. Of course, the anticipated and reported net sales are not exactly equal. I ask the students to compute the percentage difference between the reported net sales and the anticipated net sales and also to determine the MAPE differences.

Exercise 2 – Productivity:  For each year, there are 3 productivity measures that can be computed comparing net sales to number of stores, selling square feet and number of employees. Unfortunately, there are no multipliers available to compute the multifactor productivity measures for the 10 years.

Exercise 3 – Productivity change: For all years except the first, I ask the students to compute the productivity change for each of the 3 productivity measures. There is one small issue the students need to recognize. The data is given as most recent first.

Exercise 4 –Graph in Excel: I ask the students to graph the 3 sets of productivity measures. If the students create scatter graphs using the dates in row 3 and the productivity measures that they create in a row below the data then the graph will be fine. If the students create a line graph using only the computed productivity measures then the graph will run backwards. That is, the time axis will be backwards. This is important for the final exercise.

Exercise 5 – Regression/Trend Line – I ask the students to draw a regression/trend line for each of the three measures. I have shown my students that right-clicking on the graph is the easiest way to create the line. I also ask the students to find the three average productivity changes based on the slope of the line in each of the three graphs.

The students very much appreciate applying Productivity to real data, using data that has more than 2 periods and having the opportunity to work in Excel, especially with the graphing capability and regression capability within the graph option.

Guest Blog: Effects of Technology Use on Collaborative Learning Results

Our Guest Post comes from Phillip Flamm, who teaches Operations Management in the ISQS department at Texas Tech University. This is his 9th posting on our OM blog.

The Rawls College of Business here at Texas Tech U. has recently added a “technology room.” This room has 9 rectangular tables and will seat teams of 5. Each table has a large monitor at the head of the table. At the front of the room is a podium with a large screen monitor behind it. Having plugged in their laptops to the room’s web site, team members have several options:

  • View the master podium screen on the table’s large monitor
  • View the laptop screen of one of the team members
  • View specific documents

Team members interact as follows:

  • Team members take very comprehensive notes in class (lecture is structured with accompanying power point slides)
  • Team posts one member’s notes from the most recent lecture on the table monitor
  • Members go around the table in order discussing the notes they have for each power point slide
  • Extended discussion may result if there are questions about the content (each member offers their individual understanding of the concepts)
  • Member with their notes on the monitor makes changes or additions based on a clearer understanding of the material (all members can see changes as they are made)
  • After reviewing the most recent lecture they move on to the next most recent, etc., until all lectures (for the next exam) are covered
  • Every lecture is covered every time the team meets (past lecture notes generally go faster than the most recent)
  • The posting member distributes a copy of the updated, more descriptive notes at the conclusion of the meeting

Team members experience faster learning rates, increased retention, and better understanding of quantitative material. To exhibit these advantages the team members’ average exam was 15 points higher than the other 380 course students on exams this semester.

Guest Post: Four Ways to Make Your Online OM Classroom More Interactive

amy-petersonOur Guest Post today comes from Dr. Amy Peterson, who is  Senior VP of course design, development and academic research at Pearson, which publishes our OM texts.

The convenience and flexibility of the online learning environment allows learners to develop new skills and further their education, regardless of where they live. However, it can sometimes feel isolating for students and faculty.The question is: how do you build a sense of community in your online OM course? Here are 4 practical tips:

1. Integrate real-time interaction There is often limited interaction between you and your students and class members with each other. Consider how impromptu conversations outside the traditional classroom forge relationships, clarify ideas, and spark new insights. Try setting up webconferencing opportunities for class members to meet online synchronously both formally and informally.

2. Get creative with discussion boards In an online environment, you can structure your discussions so that everyone contributes, plus they’ll have more time to consider what they want to say before responding. In a larger class, you can set up smaller discussion groups of 20 so that students can get to know their fellow classmates. You can also create even smaller groups (5-7 people) for more intimate interaction.

3. Maximize engagement with non-task interaction Non-task interactions are those exchanges that are not part of the direct learning, but help create a supportive learning community. You can facilitate these types of interactions by leveraging the social networking capabilities that are available in many LMSs, such as chat and webconferencing.

4. Use multiple communication tools In addition to external social networking tools, such as Facebook, Telegram, Slack, and WhatsApp, students can meet each other in real time on Skype and Google Hangouts. Preprogrammed communication, such as introductory videos (like the ones created for the Heizer/Render/Munson text), content presentation, and email, are still important components of online learning, but student interaction can take the learning further, faster.

Guest Post: Problem-Based Learning for SPC

bumblauskasToday’s Guest Post comes from Dr. Dan Bumblauskas, who is an assistant professor and the Hamilton/ESP International Fellow for Supply Chain and Logistics Management at the University of Northern Iowa. Dan is also VP at PFC Services, a consulting firm dedicated to helping businesses improve process efficiency. 

If you’re reading this blog I am sure that you, like me, have experimented with and deployed a variety of teaching techniques in OM courses over the years. Today I’d like to share one such initiative I embarked upon a number of years ago: the development of a problem-based learning module for statistical process control (PBL-SPC).  Along with faculty and graduate students from both the colleges of business and education, I developed a web-based simulation in which students immerse themselves in a Frito-Lay factory environment based on Jay, Barry, and Chuck’s cases provided in their textbook.

The motivation for the PBL-SPC was that I found this to be a challenging topic to cover which students often find difficult to relate to and/or boring. Three different poor quality scenarios are provided (crushed chips, stale chips, and poor tasting or nasty chips) and students, as individuals or in teams, must traverse the simulated environment to assess the situation. By “speaking” with the fictitious characters created in the simulation the students get varying perspectives from the manufacturing supervisors for each area of the plant. In addition, some stations have data sets that can be downloaded as MS Excel spreadsheets to be further analyzed using SPC techniques.

Here is the link to the PBL-SPC: https://sites.uni.edu/bumblaud/ where you can access various menu options by hovering over the “Home,” button or clicking on 1 of the 3 scenarios. Under the “Home,” button, you will find the mission statement, production line schematic, staff profiles, an operational overview and a production video produced by Jay and Barry (Pearson) a few years ago.

For more information and materials, such as the team-based rubric created in conjunction with the PBL website, contact me at daniel.bumblauskas@uni.edu or 319-273-6793.

Guest Post: MyOMLab and Partial Credit

howardweiss2Our Guest Post today comes from Howard Weiss, who is Professor of Operations Management at Temple University. Howard has developed both POM for Windows and Excel OM for our text.

I have used MyOMLab with the Heizer/Render/Munson text for over 6 years now. One option on assignments in MyOMLab is to “Allow partial credit on questions with multiple parts.”  In other words, a student does not need to get every part correct on a question to receive credit. This is only one aspect of partial credit and because I use MyOMLab for exams I need to allow for other types of partial credit.

For example, I commonly see students making these mistakes:  Forgetting the initial inventory in aggregate planning;  Maximizing instead of minimizing in LP;  Entering the service time instead of the service rate in waiting lines;  Not converting one time unit to another in line balancing;  Not converting months to years in inventory; Not multiplying by the cost per unit in layout.

For some of these mistakes, all answers would be incorrect and MyOMLab would give the students a zero for each problem. When I used to grade exams by hand, I would typically identify the mistake and give the student partial credit on the problem.

I now tell the students that they must save all of their work on the problem, which in my case is an Excel file. I encourage the students to review their exam results and to send me an email if they think they deserve partial credit on the problem. They must include their original Excel file with the incorrect work so that I can see that it matches the answer they entered into MyOMLab, an explanation of the mistake that they made, and the correct way to solve the problem. I typically give half credit on the part of the question for students who successfully do this. Many of my students take advantage of this option. They, of course, want the exam points and, I, of course, want them to learn from reviewing the exam.

Guest Post: Critical-to-Time (CTT) in Today’s Supply Chain (“Playing for Time”)

john-bowlerToday’s guest Post comes from John P. Bowler, who is Visiting Professor at the Keller Graduate School of Management and DeVry University’s College of Business & Management. John has 40+ years of operational supply chain  management experience.

The ”time-driven” supply chain has necessitated industry leaders shift their focus from the Wall Street  perspective of “cost as king” to the critical-to-customer characteristic of “time.”  The expert application of time is now absolutely critical to transforming a business’s current competitive advantage into a sustainable competitive advantage.  As such, time should be the primary measuring stick of the effectiveness of all actions which align the voice of the business (VOB) with the voice of the customer (VOC).

Hearing the voice of the customer is one thing.  However, satisfying the needs of the client is another.  Given today’s market landscape, this is not an easy task.  Shorter product life cycles, increasing consumer expectations, and the immediacy of the Internet of Things (IoT) economy all create challenging hurdles.  In order to sustain itself, the firm’s business strategy, product/service life-cycle management (the innovation cycle), and risk management practices must each align internally within the firm and externally with the customer.

The traditional “vital few” critical-to-customer characteristics are cost, quality, and time.  Cost advantages come and go. Someone can always do it cheaper.  Case in point is the ASUS TEK and Dell computer debacle.  Top quality is not only expected, but it is also a given.  Any firm providing a defective product or service faces both monetary and reputational (the slings and arrows of social media) repercussions.  Additionally, the boundaries between relative cost and quality niches are now blurred.  Amazon.com is one such example.  All things being equal in the market segment, time is the prime differentiator.

Time is now the “vital one” among the “vital few.”  Organizations focusing on the “vital one” critical need of the customer ensure maintaining a sustainable competitive advantage.

Guest Post: Future Research Themes in Supply Chain Management

andreas wielandToday’s Guest Post comes from Andreas Wieland, Assistant Professor of Supply Chain Management at Copenhagen Business School. This is his 4th posting.

What are the future dominant research themes in supply chain management? With my coathors Robert Handfield and Christian Durach, our new article, “Mapping the Landscape of Future Research Themes in Supply Chain Management” (see Journal of Business Logistics, Aug., 2016), answers the question. The results are based on survey data collected from 141 leading academics from the SCM discipline.

The respondents were presented a list with 35 topics that are potentially important in SCM. They were then asked to assess to what level they believe these topics will become important in the next years and to what level they think these topics should become important. The will– and should-become-important top 10 lists do not differ substantially. Both of them include the following topics: sustainability & green issues, analytics, risk management & disruption, health care, and innovation. Interestingly, big data, the topic ranked 1st on the will-become-important top 10 list, does not appear on the should-become-important top 10 list. Instead, the people dimension of SCM appears in the should-become-important top 10 list.

We also calculated the differences between the will- and should-become-important survey data. We find that the people dimension of SCM, ethical issues, internal integration, transparency/visibility, and human capital/talent management are the five topics that are expected to be most under researched in the next couple of years. So, if you are planning to start a new research project or a Ph.D. related to SCM, these topics could be good choices. On the other end, big data and analytics turn out to be the topics that are expected to be most over researched.

We also linked the topics that top the should-become-important list to each other. This has led to a table containing ideas that could lead to innovative and cross-disciplinary research questions.

Guest Post: Campus Club Cupcakes – Classroom Course Icebreaker Exercise

brent sniderOur Guest Post today comes from Brent Snider, who is an award winning senior instructor of Operations and Supply Chain Management at the University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business.

The first session of a required undergraduate OM course is often challenging for both faculty and students. Reviewing the course syllabus is mundane, and many students are unaware of what OM even is or why it is required.

Campus Club Cupcakes was developed specifically as a course icebreaker exercise to turn the first session into an in-class exercise that gets the entire class engaged and working together within minutes– while also conveying what OM is, its importance, and how it relates to other functional areas. Campus Club Cupcakes is a variation of the popular “Kristen’s Cookie Co.” case, incorporating supply chain management concerns. It consists of a 1-page mini-case and 5 related questions and is completely free. (E-mail me at brent.snider@haskayne.ucalgary.ca and I will send you the whole lesson plan).

The case scenario is based on a student club looking at alternatives to raise funds for their community development initiatives. The questions students are expected to work through are (1) how long would a student have to wait, (2) how many orders can be completed in a shift, (3) how many trays would be needed, (4) should a discount be offered, and (5) what are some of the risks. Cupcakes require a multi-stage process (baking, then toppings) which also enables discussion on supply chain management concepts of subcontracting and postponement.

Students work through the questions for 20–30 minutes followed by a debrief, all of which can be completed in either a 50-70 minute session.  We have used Campus Club Cupcakes to kick-off the OM course for the past 2 years and students have overwhelmingly embraced it, with over 92% commenting positively about the exercise.

I am confident you too can turn the dreaded “day 1” into “day won” with this exercise!

 

 

Guest Post: Total Team Collaborative Learning in OM at Texas Tech U.

flamm

Our Guest Post comes from Phillip Flamm, who teaches Operations Management in the ISQS Department at Texas Tech University

I have taught Operations Management, using the Heizer/Render/Munson text, for four summers now, with the following course guidelines:

  • Using power point pages with 3 slides per page and lines for notes to the right, teams reviewed notes together following lectures to clean up any questions. Lecture review is compounded daily by adding the new lecture material and begins again after an exam
  • Worked daily quizzes together for a team grade
  • Prepared quantitative teaching sessions during the summer class
  • Calculated quantitative problems together for a team grade

Exam grades for these summer teams were considerably higher than scores in my regular Fall and Spring semester classes (average 89% compared to 64% regular class average).  This Total Team Collaborative Learning (TTCL) improved student performance in the summer setting.

So, what does this mean? It appears that TTCL tends to improve learning, retention, and analytical abilities. I would really like to find a certain format that would help all students learn more, learn faster, and perform better. I think that selecting and training section leaders to be more proactive when it comes to individual performance and integration into the team environment are the keys.

In the Fall, the business school has a new classroom with video equipment at each table. This could be used to train leaders and focus group members and I will continue to experiment with TTCL.

 

Guest Post: Tackling Risk in Global Supply Chains

 

andreas wielandToday’s Guest Post comes from Andreas Wieland, Assistant Professor of Supply Chain Management at Copenhagen Business School.

Managing risks in a global supply chain can be a difficult task. But there are substantial differences between 2 systems: the company and the supply chain. In a company, it might be relatively easy to get an overview about all the risks that might occur. But a supply chain consists of hundreds, sometimes 1,000s of companies. For example, if 30,000 parts are needed to build a car – many of them coming from different suppliers and suppliers’ suppliers – it should become obvious that the scalability of traditional risk management tools becomes quickly limited.

Identifying and assessing all types of risks from all suppliers, their suppliers, and all raw materials suppliers is simply impossible! Plus, doing this is also not always reasonable: many of the supply chain disruptions that happened in recent years were, in fact, caused by risks that had not appeared on risk category lists. Could we really imagine that a Tsunami in Japan would cause a nuclear accident?  The harmful thing for Japanese car manufacturers was not that it was an earthquake that had happened. It was that many of their redundant suppliers were located in the same region. Worse, even the non-Japanese plants of these companies were affected, as they had failed to make the supply chains of different regions independent.

It’s not just the design of a supply chain that can help a company become more robust. It’s also the product design. Avoiding materials that can only be supplied from certain regions, such as rare-earth materials, or suppliers of non-standardized parts, can help ward off certain types of risk. Modular product design can help to at least semi-finish a product and to add missing modules at a later stage when they become available again. Such systemic solutions help companies cope with risk in the supply chain without paying too much attention on the exact causes of risk.

In my essay in Delivered (the DHL magazine),  Managing the Unknown: How We Should Tackle Risk in Global Supply Chains I list 8 potential ways to increase the supply chain’s ability to avoid and resist risk.

Guest Post: Teaching Cases in Your Undergraduate OM Class

Matthew_Drake-1Today’s Guest Post comes from Dr. Matt Drake, who is Associate Professor at the Duquesne U. School of Business. 

Teaching cases have been a mainstay in the MBA classroom for decades. Cases possess several pedagogical benefits over the traditional lecture method: They do a good job simulating a complex decision environment, require students to separate relevant from irrelevant information, and require students to synthesize different concepts and analytical techniques to develop recommendations.

While case usage is ubiquitous for MBAs, they are somewhat less commonly employed in undergraduate classrooms. This is at least partially due to the fact that many OM undergraduate courses are designed to simply introduce concepts and techniques rather than to give the students much of a chance to apply them. That does not, however, mean that cases cannot be used effectively in any form at the undergraduate level. Your Heizer/Render OM text has over 80 1-2 page cases that are entirely appropriate for undergrads.

I have successfully introduced cases into my undergraduate courses in each of the following 3 ways:

Discussion only. Some cases do not require any sophisticated analysis and just ask students to consider the situation and generate and evaluate possible strategies. These are prime candidates to be used solely as a basis of class discussion.

Instructor presents model. Many cases require a substantial amount of modeling and analysis, but instructors may not want to allocate the class time that students need to complete the entire case analysis. In my class I ask them to summarize the decision scenario, and I lead them through the required decision analysis.

Students conduct full analysis. Some cases are so rich that I find it beneficial to have the students complete the entire case analysis as they would if they were MBAs. I assign these cases as out-of-class group homework that the students complete over 2 weeks or so. I spend anywhere from 20-60 minutes in class discussing some of the additional issues.

If an instructor is new to using cases in the classroom, I recommend that he or she start slow and introduce 1-2 cases at a time. It is not necessary to redesign a course completely.

Matt is editing a special issue of INFORMS Transactions on Education about innovative ways to use cases. He invites submissions to: http://pubsonline.informs.org/pb-assets/ITED%20Call%20for%20Papers%20-%20Cases%20-%20Final.pdf

Guest Post: Class Discussion–From Blank Stares to True Engagement in Your OM Class

jay howardOur Guest Post comes from Dr. Jay R. Howard, who is the dean at Butler University. His most recent book is Discussion in the College: Getting Your Students Engaged and Participating in Person and Online (Josey-Bass, 2015). 

 

Thirty years of research have demonstrated that when students are engaged in the classroom, they learn more. Classroom discussion is likely the most commonly used strategy for actively engaging students. Yet there’s always the possibility that our invitation for students to engage will be met with silence.

Sociologists have long contended that our behavior is guided by norms. Professors believe that one classroom norm is that students are expected to pay attention. But in most college classrooms students are not required to pay attention. The real norm is paying civil attention—or creating the appearance of paying attention. Students do this in a variety of ways. They write in their notebooks, nod their heads, make fleeting eye contact, and chuckle when the professor attempts to be funny. Why can students get away with only paying civil attention? The answer is that we as faculty let them.

We believe they should be self-motivated to complete assignments and prepare for class. Therefore, we don’t embarrass students into preparing for and participating in discussion. The result is that students can safely slide by, paying only civil attention in most college classrooms.

How do we get students to move beyond civil attention to true engagement in our OM classes? Perhaps the most effective strategy is allowing students to formulate their thoughts prior to being called on to verbally participate. The think-pair-share classroom assessment technique is one example: Ask students to take one minute and write a response to a question. Then ask students to share their thoughts. Another strategy is to structure your course so it requires students to come to class having read an assignment and prepared a short response paper or answer an on-line JIT quiz. In these ways, faculty can create new classroom norms, replacing the norm of civil attention with the expectation that all students come prepared to participate in classroom discussion.

Guest Post: Designing the Effective OM Classroom

Matthew_Drake-1Today’s guest Post comes from Prof. Matt Drake, who is the Witt Faculty Fellow in SCM at Duquesne University’s Palumbo-Donahue School of Business.

Most of us have heard the common refrain that a student “has never been good at math.” But I have found that the vast majority of my students possess the analytical capabilities that my courses require. Some just need to gain the confidence in these abilities.  My courses are largely still lecture-based on the surface when I present new material. However, I do try to turn the class into active problem-solving sessions wherever possible to keep the students engaged.

When I present example problems, I sometimes get feedback that I go too quickly for some of them to keep up with me. As a compromise, I post the Excel files that I build during class on our course website so that students can download the files and compare their notes to mine.

I also try to use at least a few cases in each course. In my experience, students enjoy and appreciate considering the real-world decision scenarios that cases offer. I have 3 additional thoughts for designing effective OM courses:

  • Be understanding and flexible with deadlines and attendance, especially with part-time students. I always accept late assignments with a point deduction to be fair to other students.
  • Don’t be afraid to say, “I don’t know.” No one person can be an expert in everything. If students ask questions to which I do not know the answer, I tell them that I do not have an answer off the top of my head. I then try to follow-up after I have had the chance to research the issue. Students seem to appreciate this honesty.
  • Students appreciate rapid feedback to their questions and to their work on assignments. I try to return all graded assignments within a week, and I reply to emails as soon as I can.