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Managing Operations and Information Technology

Days and Class Hours: Spring 2002
Saturdays from 9:00 a.m. - 11:50 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. to 3:50 p.m.: Saturdays, March (16, 30), April (6, 13, 20, 27), and May (4).

Instructor: Dr. Chih-Yang Tsai,         Office: SBB148, TEL: 257-2934,

Email: tsaic@newpaltz.edu    URL: http://www.newpaltz.edu/~tsaic

BlackBoard Server : http://blackboard.newpaltz.edu

URL of this course outline: http://www.newpaltz.edu/~tsaic/courses/20520_1.html

Office Hours For Spring 2002:  W, F: 9:45-11:00PM,        W:  5:25-6:25PM       T: 2:00-2:30PM (before Spring break) and  S: 8:30-9:00AM(after Spring break)
 
 

Course Outline

Objective:This course is designed to help students understand the role of two important business functions, Operations and Information, in an organization and address key management issues in the two areas.  One of the focuses is on the interaction between the two functional areas.
On the operations management side, major topics include which have benefited and changed greatly due to the development of information technology.  On the information technology side, we emphsize the development in It examines the emerging role of IT as a new functional area and covers information technologies used at various levels of business decisions and operations.

Textbook: K. Laudon & J. Laudon, "Essentials of Management Information Systems", 4th Edition, Prentice-Hall, 2001, ISBN 0-13-019323-2.   It helps if you have any Operations Management books such as the one used in 20312 Operations Management. (See the course web page)   However, it is not required due to my concern on the cost.

Access to Blackboard Server: All announcements, homework assignments, transparencies used in class lecture etc. will be made available on the blackboard server.  Every student will get an account for the course.  Please check the announcement periodically for new events (Events will also be announced in class.)

Evaluations:

    1. Presentation (25%): Each student is assigned to take charge of presenting and leading classroom discussions for a subject.   Presentation starts from the second week of the semester.
    2. Paper (30%): Each student is in charge of writing a chapter on a subject presented by other students after the subject has been presented in class.  The student collect a copy of the presentation, homework, and his/her own sources of information to write the paper.  The paper is due May 4.
    3. Final Exam (30%): an in-class final exam that covers all subject discussed in class.
    4. Note (5%): Students write a 3-page typed comment on a subject at the scheduled time the subject is being disccussed.  The subject should not include the ones that you are either in charge of the presentation or responsible for writing a paper.  No late homework will be accepted.
    5. Class participation (10%): Students are expected to participate in class discussions.  Evaluation of classroom participation include relevance, frequency, depth of students' comments to the subject being discussed.
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Course Syllabus

Syllabus: Because the course focuses on an area that changes almost every day, we can not expect to find a textbook that is up-to-date and covers all the subject matters of the course.  As a result, the instructor and students will try to create a structure such that all materials being discussed can be filled into the structure and flow smoothly from one subject to the next.  Within each subject under the overall structure, efforts will be made again to create a sub-structure and fill in materials to support the structure and sub-structure.  We might find that after collecting more information, our original structure can no longer support the big picture and we need to go back to revise the structure.  At the end, when we put together the paper from every subject matter, we have a short book that covers everything discussed throughout the semester.  A tentative structure is given below. I will present Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 of Part I.

The chapter number in the front is based on my organization of the topics to be covered in the course.  The chapter number appeared in the parenthesis are the chapter(s) from the textbook that has coverage of the same subject.  However, our chapters usually have a broader scope than those from the textbook.

Part I: An Integrated View of Operations and Information Technology (week 1)

   Chapter 1: Introduction of Operations/IT Management and Operations/IT Strategies (Chapters 1 & 2 Laudon & Laudon)

   Chapter 2: Organizations--Structures, Processes and Decision Making (Chapters 1& 3 Laudon & Laudon)

Part II: Operations Management (week 2)

   Chapter 3: Operations function--from a Supply Chain Management perspective

   Chapter 4: Supply chain management and JIT, TQM, ERP

Part III: The Development of Information Technology (week 3, 4)

   Chapter 5: Hardware/Software Technology (Chapters 4&5&6, Laudon&Laudon)

   Chapter 6: E-Commerce Strategies and Practices (Chapters 7&8, Laudon&Laudon)

Part IV: Integration of IT and Other Business Functions

    Chapter 7:  (Chapter 8, Laudon&Laudon)

   Chapter 8: Changes in Organizations and Environment (Chapters 9&15, Laudon&Laudon)

Part V: Conclusion and Trends

   Chapter 9: Information System, Decision Support and Managing Knowledge (Chapters 10,11&12, Laudon&Laudon)

   Chapter 10: Ethical/Legal/Social Impacts (Chapters 13&14, Laudon&Laudon)

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Course Preparation Guides

There are some basic guidelines students can follow when preparing for class presentation, homework, chapter papers.  Evaluation of performance on those assignments are largely based on those guidelines.  There are common issues for example, relevance, organization, clarity, etc. for all those assignments.  There are also unique factors in each form of assignment.  For example, in class presentation, time management is one important issue but it is not as critical in other forms of assignment.  Specific requirements for presentations, comments, and chapter papers chapter can be found in the guideline page.

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Reading Lists:

  Suggested readings can found in the reading list page.