Teaching
Operations Management and Information Systems are two distinct, though increasingly connected, areas of learning and research.
Operations management, at its core, is the understanding, processes and their management within a company or organisation. Information systems is about the handling and interpretation of data and information generated by the company or organisation. We say company or organisation as these areas are common for all organisations, whether their focus is a traditional one around the generation of profit, or in service for either the public or charitable sectors.
Teaching within Operations Management includes learning about management of the supply chain, including relationships, logistics, decisions of location, and procurement, covering both qualitative and quantitative methods, both of which are equally valid.
Qualitative examples are company visits, case studies, business games, and interpretative understanding of people and their situation within their organisation and supply chain. Quantitative examples arise as much of logistics and supply chain behaviour can be modelled mathematically, where the learning is about understanding these mathematical models, choosing which may be appropriate, and suitable application to real life examples.
Teaching within Information Systems begins with an introduction to some of the suitable programming languages such as PHP and R, then continuing to understand data sets, and information handling and storage.
A cross-over between these two seemingly distinct areas comes through the growing requirement for handling and understanding large amounts of data. Data analysis is an area of growing importance in managing organisations, though also in many other areas of life, including science, life sciences and engineering.
Courses
We provide a range of taught modules at undergraduate and Master's level, as well as on the School's MBA programmes.
At postgraduate level, the department hosts four specialist MSc courses:
Alexander Trautrims, Associate Professor in Supply Chain and Operations Management, talks about modern slavery in agricultural supply chains.
Teaching within the department benefits from our active research culture, strengthened by our many teaching specialists. All our academics with teaching responsibilities are dedicated to providing up to date understanding and learning to meet the changing business and organisational environment.
