Fundamentals of Operations

Operations are those processes through which companies produce and distribute products and services to their customers. They are fundamental for two main reasons: on the one hand, they impact the costs companies have to face and, on the other hand, they strongly affect the service level seen by the customers. This course will address the description and the classification of production and logistics systems, the methodologies and the indicators for measuring both their internal and external performances, and the techniques to conduct the most important planning processes: demand planning– the demand forecasting process and the forecasting models based on time series; inventory planning– the typologies of inventories and the models to manage them; production planning- the principles of production planning and the models to generate the Master Production Schedule (MPS); materials planning- material requirements planning (MRP). At the end of this course you will thus be able to understand and properly make the main decisions to manage production and logistics systems.