Private Tutoring for Operations Management at the Darden Business School, UVA

The Darden Business School at the University of Virginia is well known for its strong Operations Management department. All MBA students, both the full-time MBA, part-time MBA (PTMBA), and executive MBA (EMBA) students, encounter 7315 A/B: Operations I and 7316 A/B: Operations II as core classes in their MBA programs. The 7315 A/B: Operations I is usually taught in (Q2) and the 7316 A/B: Operations II is offered in Q5. This page covers the following:

  1. Operations Research Design at Darden Business School, UVA
  2. 7315 A/B: Operations I (Q3) Course Objectives
  3. 7316 A/B: Operations II (Q5) Course Objectives
  4. 7316 A/B: Operations II (Q5) Course Structure
    • Module 1: Capacity Decisions for Make-to-Order and Service Firms
    • Module 2: Inventory Decisions for Make-to-Stock Systems
    • Module 3: Supply Chain Coordination
  5. Grading for 7316 A/B: Operations II (Q5)
  6. Required Textbook 7316 A/B: Operations II (Q5)
  7. Teaching Faculty for Operations Management at Darden UVA
  8. Tutoring for Operations Research Courses at Darden Business School, UVA

Graduate Tutor provides live online tutoring for 7316 A/B: Operations II and 7316 A/B: Operations II as well as other operations research courses at Darden Business School, UVA. Please email or call us if we can provide you operations management tutoring.

Operations Research Design at Darden Business School, UVA

You can read more about the operations research department at Darden, UVA and their design of the operations management program in this paper aptly named: The Operations Course at Darden. Here is the Abstract:

Firms exist to create and deliver value to customers, shareholders, employees, and society. Operations are the processes and coordinating information systems by which the firm creates and delivers value. Thus, managers in every functional area need an understanding of the firm’s operations, as well as the essential tradeoffs that managers make as they design, manage, and improve operations.
Excellent operations are essential for sustaining competitive advantage. The firm’s operations embody its capabilities, which, in turn, determine the firm’s future options. Key capabilities—or the processes the firm performs better than its competitors—critically affect how successfully the firm competes, and how effectively it can improve and renew itself. Thus, operations management not only enables the delivery of value to current customers, but it also determines the firm’s abilities to serve future customers. Excellence in operations creates strategic opportunities by freeing resources for new uses or for building new capabilities. An operations manager oversees the organization’s wide variety of processes and information systems. These define work activities, and transform inputs of capital, energy, materials, information, and employee resources into outputs of greater value than the costs of the inputs consumed. This wealth creation via the operations function of business includes service activities as well as manufacturing, and it includes critical processes and information systems for sourcing and distributing goods and services: improving cycle time, health and safety, and quality; launching new product and new services development; and matching customer demand and sources throughout a supply chain.

Weiss, Elliott N. and Landel, Robert, The Operations Course at Darden. Darden Case No. UVA-OM-0920, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1584166 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1584166

7315 A/B: Operations I (Q3) Course Objectives

The 7315 A/B: Operations I is the first operations course Darden’s MBA students, full-time MBA, part-time MBA (PTMBA), and executive MBA (EMBA) students encounter. So this course is an introductory course that highlights questions such as:

  1. What Is Operations?
  2. How do operations create and deliver value to customers?
  3. Why is operations management important to shareholders?
  4. Why do managers need to understand the firm’s operations?
  5. What are the trade-offs in operations management?
  6. What are operations performance metrics used to evaluate and manage operations?
  7. Strategy and the design of process and operations practices.

Operations management is the study of the processes, practices and information systems by which the firm creates and delivers value.

7316 A/B: Operations II (Q5) Course Objectives

7316 A/B: Operations II (Q5) course will continue from the 7315 A/B: Operations I  course and explore how firms create and deliver value to customers, shareholders, employees, and society.  7316 A/B: Operations II (Q5) builds on these process concepts introduced and explores the connection between managing operations and a firm’s business model or the way a firm manages resources to meet a customer’s need.  MBA will study how firms make both inventory and capacity decisions in the presence of variability and how firms must coordinate with their trading partners. 

7316 A/B: Operations II (Q5) Course Structure

The Operations Management II course at Darden builds on the concepts introduced in the initial operations course. It aims to deepen students’ understanding of how firms create and deliver value through their operations. The course covers three primary modules:

Module 1: Capacity Decisions for Make-to-Order and Service Firms

  • Use queuing models to determine how much capacity is needed.
  • Learn how capacity investments impact customer experience.
  • Understand how uncertainty affects capacity investments and customer experience.
  • Find ways to improve operational performance related to capacity decisions.

Module 2: Inventory Decisions for Make-to-Stock Systems

  • Learn the financial effects of investing in inventory.
  • Use the newsvendor model to make inventory decisions.
  • Understand how inventory investments impact customer experience.
  • Understand how uncertainty affects inventory investments and customer experience.
  • Find ways to improve operational performance related to inventory decisions.

Module 3: Supply Chain Coordination

  • Learn how misaligned incentives can hurt supply chain performance and how to fix them.
  • Understand how bad or distorted information flow can hurt supply chain performance and how to improve information flows.

Grading for 7316 A/B: Operations II (Q5)

The course grading is designed to evaluate both individual and team performance across various activities. Participation in class discussions constitutes 35% of the grade, while invited participation in questions and assignments on Canvas accounts for 5%. Performance on two team simulations, specifically the Supply Chain Simulation and Inventory Simulation, makes up 15% of the grade. Additionally, there are two short quizzes covering queuing models and inventory models, which collectively contribute 10% to the overall grade. Finally, the end-of-quarter exam, which covers all course topics, comprises 35% of the total grade.

No Required Textbook for 7316 A/B Operations II (Q5)

There is no required textbook for 7316 A/B: Operations II (Q5). All the study materials are the cases and technical notes included in the course packet. The following operations management textbooks are recommended as supplementary reading material:

  • Operations Management by William J Stevenson
  • Cliff T. Ragsdale’s Spreadsheet Modeling and Decision Analysis
  • Bernard W. Taylor’s Introduction to Management Science
  • The Annenberg Project’s For All Practical Purposes: Management Science.
  • Hamdy A. Taha’s Operations Research: An Introduction
  • Cecil Bozarth and Robert B. Handfield’s Introduction to Operations and Supply Chain Management
  • Robert Jacobs, Richard B. Chase and Nicholas J. Aquilano’s Operations and Supply Chain Management

Other topics Graduate Tutor provides tutoring in include:

Teaching Faculty for Operations Management at Darden UVA

A number of professors from the Operations Research Department at the Darden School of Business, UVA teach 7316 A/B: Operations I and 7316 A/B: Operations II on a rotational basis. There is no one assigned faculty for this course, unlike in specialized courses. Other courses from the operations research faculty at Darden include:

Core Operations Research Courses 

Supply Chain Management Courses

Business Consulting or Operations Consulting Related Courses

Tutoring for 7316 A/B: Operations I&II and 7316 A/B: Operations II as well as other Operations Research Courses at Darden Business School, UVA

Graduate Tutor provides live online tutoring for 7316 A/B: Operations II and 7316 A/B: Operations II as well as other operations research courses at Darden Business School, UVA. Please email or call us if we can provide you operations management tutoring for 7316 A/B: Operations I&II as well as other operations research courses. Or for that matter any other quantitative course you will encounter in a b-school program.

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