Engineers have to be entrepreneurs who can see through challenges and find solutions that work best, and work within budgetary, supply chain, and operational constraints. Therefore, today’s engineers will find business training relevant to their professional development. In addition to the Microeconomics and Entrepreneurship courses that are part of the Liberal Arts core, several Business or Economics courses are electives for the engineering programme.
Operations Management
This course introduces students to concepts and techniques related to the design, planning, control, and improvement of service and manufacturing operations. It covers topics in process analysis, quality programme implementation and management, inventory and supply chain management, and operations strategy. The course consists of lectures and discussion of case analyses.
Supply Chain Management
The ever-increasing variety of products and customization in the marketplace poses a serious challenge to firms competing to deliver products faster and more efficiently to their customers. In order to compete effectively, firms must leverage advances in information technology (including the internet) and opportunities arising from a global economy to form strategic alliances and tightly integrate operations within their supply chains. Effective supply chain management has become the focus of attention for many senior managers in industry today. This course considers management of a supply chain in a global environment from a managerial perspective. The course will introduce students to different concepts related to supply chain management with a focus on analysis, management, and improvement of supply chain processes. The course is divided into five related modules: inventory and information management, distribution and transportation, global operations, supplier management, and management of product variety. Several new innovations in supply chain management will be discussed.
Microeconomics
This course will cover the principles of microeconomic analysis with the aim of helping students make better business decisions in their professional careers. In addition to introducing the standard basis of economic theory such as perfect information, production theory, perfect competition and monopoly, the course will focus on helping students think strategically about achieving competitive advantage through the management of the firm's resources. We will analyze strategic management decisions concerning the value of information, cost determination, pricing, market entry and exit, outsourcing, the design of organizations and contracts, and the design and administration of incentive systems. We will develop microeconomic tools for both simple and complex business environments involving strategic interactions. Through this course, students will develop an understanding of basic microeconomic theory and improve their ability to make sound business decisions. Through their assigned readings, case studies, and participation in a computer-simulated competitive strategy game, students will also develop practical insights into managing for competitive advantage.
Risk Management
This is a course on how corporations make use of the insights and tools of risk management. This course is taught from the point of view of the manufacturing corporation, the utility, the engineer, or the software firm — any potential end-user of derivatives, but not the dealer. While this course will make use of some of pricing models, the focus is on how corporations use the insights and models to improve their operations, minimize risk, to increase the value of their real assets, and create the financial flexibility necessary to implement their core strategy.
Operations Research
This course teaches students how to formulate and solve a variety of management, economics, engineering and science problems using modeling, optimization techniques, and simulation. Topics include linear and integer programming, simplex method, duality, sensitivity analysis, branch and bound algorithm, transportation and assignment problems, network optimization, and problem solving using optimization software.