MBA Online

Operations Management

This course will introduce basic concepts and practices of operations management in service industries as well as manufacturing sectors. Topics include business processes, inventory management, and quality control. In the course, we will discuss questions such as: Why is BPR (Business Process Reengineering) so important? How can we manage inventory in an efficient way? What are the applications of statistical process control? The course is not only for operations managers but also for general managers who need to revamp business processes to establish competitive advantage.

New Product Development
The ability to successfully develop and launch a new product into the market is one of the fundamental skills that today’s business executives must understand. This course examines the most successful strategies, processes and methods used to bring a product from idea generation to market launch. Students will examine the institutional implications of new product development, barriers to success, and effective methods to drive a new product concept through the entire development cycle. Emphasis will be placed on the ability of marketing managers to integrate R&D, consumer and corporate views while guiding a product along the development path. This course will look at a number of industries including high technology, Internet, financial services and manufacturing.

Service Management
This course examines essential issues of service management. Although much of the existing knowledge derived from the study of manufacturing enterprises can apply to services, managing services imposes on us special challenges and opportunities that stem from their unique features. The course aims to promote an understanding of how such challenges and opportunities are managed, and to assist students in learning successful service management philosophies, principles, paradigms, tools and ideas that can be benchmarks for future management practice. Classic and contemporary cases from various service industries are to be analyzed.

Adding Value Through Internet, Mobile, Communications, and Ubiquitous Connectivity - Degree in One-year

Let us be realisitic. The global business environment has been changing dramatically over the last few years. The impact has led to a complete transformation of business itself, literally any kind of business, and the kind of careers it demands.

E-Business, earlier thought of as just buying and selling using the Internet, has become an undeniable reality with applications for all kinds of businesses from banking to human resource optimization, from manufacturing to sales, from medical fields to logistic management, and from transforming education to creating new forms of government administration. A bank CEO today, for example, can monitor his bank’s performance, literally in real time by implementing technologies based on E-Business. A strategically thinking manager then can use the same infrastructure, or enhance it with compatible technology innovations, to provide a host of services to customers that the bank’s competitors never thought of, thus creating completely new revenue streams for the bank.

While the potential of E-Business is literally unlimited, the success of any E-Business initiative depends on strategies and its integration and alignment with the overall business objectives. In our program, “E-Business” means all kinds of IT technologies, along with Internet, Mobile, and other Ubiquitous connectivity innovations, that can be used to create business value.

This warrants the need for professionally trained managers in E-Business, who understand traditional business processes, the convergence of Technology and Business, the new innovations in tecnology, and who can help the new and existing businesses to seamlessly integrate E-Business and technology initiatives to create value. This ability to create value is what we teach in this program!

After carefully studying current business needs, we have added more practical relevance by linking our curriculum with the “IUJ Platforms” which literally tie what we teach in the program with the most advanced technologies from our partner companies. Notable among them is the world’s most advanced Mobile technology from Japan’s IT giants. With a uniquely designed one-year program, well-experienced faculty, an especially designed hi-tech “E-Lab”, coupled with MBA offerings from our top-rated business school, we are best positioned to offer the technology management and E-Business training to you than any school in Japan or in the Asia Pacific region.

Operations Management
This course provides a fundamental understanding of manufacturing and service operations and their role in the organisation. You look at topics including process flow analysis, inventory management, capacity planning, facilities location, total quality management, human resource management, technology management, and manufacturing and service strategy.

Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST)

Operations Management is a division of the Department of Information Systems, Business Statistics and Operations Management. The department was ranked 12th worldwide by INFORMS in research productivity based on publications in Information Systems and Operations Management journals. The division includes two research areas: Operations Management and Statistics.

The PhD program in Operations Management emphasizes model-based methodology and practice-motivated research. The program trains students to use quantitative tools and analytical frameworks from operations research, economics, and other disciplines to study managerial problems in business processes, such as supply chains, manufacturing, and service systems.

Faculty members in this area have PhD degrees from top universities such as Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, MIT, Stanford and UBC. They are frequent contributors to top academic journals, such as Operations Research, Management Science, Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, and IIE Transactions. Several of them have served or are currently serving on the editorial boards of these journals.

The research foci of the Operations Management area are supply chain contracting, information sharing in supply chains, supply chain coordination, interface of marketing and supply chain management, production and inventory management, incentives in operations, and quality management.

The PhD program in Statistics emphasizes both the theoretical development of statistical methodologies and applications to the real business world. The program trains students to have a solid theoretical foundation and statistical expertise in applications to various areas like finance, economics and marketing, and statistical consulting.

Faculty members in this area have PhD degrees from top universities such as Stanford and UC Berkeley. Their works appear in top journals like Annals of Statistics, Journal of the American Statistical Association and Biometrika. The research foci of the Statistics area are Bayesian statistics, missing data problems, cluster analysis, semiparameteric models, data mining, sequential analysis, stochastic control, financial time series modeling, statistical methods for risk management and nonlinear time series.

Postgraduate Programs
SOB trains full-time postgraduates under the master degree program in business management and accounting. The programs offer seven concentrations—international business management, international marketing, foreign trade quantitative analysis, manufacturing and service system management, international accounting, cost and management accounting, and financial management.
Applicants for the master’s program must have a bachelor’s degree. There is no requirement for their undergraduate major. Given the international orientation of SOB’s graduates, students are highly recommended to have a good mastery of English and quantitative analysis skills. SOB will provide students with a solid theoretical foundation, advanced techniques and analytical capabilities by means of flexible and diversified training. SOB will also improve their communicating skills and leadership quality, in order to make them professionally competent.