Overview
Firms are looking to reduce total costs, enhance revenues, and meet the demands of their customer base. Global Supply Chain Management (GSCM) has emerged as a core competency for competing in the 21st century.
The GSCM concentration is flexible. It is designed for students who wish to pursue career depth in the field as well as for those who intend to develop more broad-based expertise in the area as a support for other careers. Many students take on a dual concentration with GSCM and another in their related areas of interest.
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Concentration Requirements
GSCM students complete a total of six courses, of which at least one course must come from each of the four clusters:
Supply Chain and Operations Management Cluster covers the strategic capabilities afforded by the integration with customers and suppliers.
Supply Chain Management Supply Chain Management
Increases in product variety and customization in the past few years have posed challenges to firms in terms of delivering products to customers faster and more efficiently. With the prevalence of the usage of the Internet for business, electronic business transformations are occurring in every business. One of the fundamental enablers for electronic commerce is effective supply chain management. Thus, supply chain management has become the focus of attention of senior management in the industry today.
This course considers management of a supply chain in a global environment from a managerial perspective. The focus is on analysis, management and improvement of supply chain processes and their adaptation to the electronic business environment. The course is divided into six related modules, namely, Inventory and Information Management, Distribution and Transportation, Global Operations, Supplier Management, Management of Product Variety and Electronic Supply Chains. Several new concepts including Prognostic Supply Chains, Build-to-Order, Collaborative Forecasting, Delayed Differentiation, Cross Docking, Global Outsourcing and Efficient Consumer Response will be discussed. The course will focus on traditional supply chain concepts and also introduce students to changes in supply chain management practices due to emergence of the Internet. Analytical and simulation approaches utilized in industry will also be introduced. At the end of the course, a student will have the necessary tools and metrics to evaluate a current supply chain and recommend design changes to supply chain processes.
Service Operations Management
This course is designed to provide students with the conceptual models and techniques needed to design, analyze and evaluate service delivery processes. The course will present business models, quantitative tools and techniques used by consultants and internal analysts in enhancing the effectiveness of service delivery processes. Emphasis will be placed on several major trends in services today, such as the integration of manufacturing and services in the supply chain, service blueprints for process improvement, the outsource of back room operations, sustainable services through franchising and multisided evaluation, revenue management, and management of customer contact centers.
Guest speakers will present live case examples illustrating selected topics. An updated list of cases from a variety of service industries, including the airlines, computer industry, financial institutions and golf industry, will provide the context for this course that highlights the distinctive operations challenges faced by services today.
Modeling Cluster covers the decision-aiding and analytic tools for the optimization of material, information, and financial flows necessary to effectively coordinate business activities that are geographically dispersed.
Operations Management Models
The purpose of this course is to provide exposure to a number of different modeling techniques that are used in Operations Management, developing your skill both in building models and interpreting the output of these decision tools. Although the emphasis of this course is on operations, the tools that we will discuss have practical applications in a wide variety of functional areas, including marketing, finance and human resource management. The objective is not to create expert mathematicians; we will discuss the theoretical underpinnings of these techniques only as needed. Rather, the emphasis is on assessing the applicability of these tools in practical situations.
Management Science Models
This course provides an introduction to the concepts and methods of Management Science, which involves the application of mathematical modeling and analysis to practical management problems. Emphasis is given to model formulation, sensitivity analysis, and interpretation of computer output, rather than to the details of the solution methodology. Both deterministic and probabilistic models are discussed. The course covers problems in resource allocation, project management, transportation and supply chain logistics, crew scheduling, facility location and design, and nutrition, amongst many others. The course introduces some of the more important mathematical optimization techniques, including linear, integer, goal and dynamic programming. Extensive use is made of the Premium Excel Solver, Crystal Ball, and Microsoft Project.
Marketing Models
An introduction to the models which can be used to address marketing problems - both the more traditional spreadsheet models, which are best used to address more tactical problems, and systems dynamics models, which are best used to address high-level strategic problems. Material on spreadsheet and systems dynamics modeling techniques, data sources and uses, and marketing decision support systems will be included. A number of model-assisted marketing cases will be used.
Global Management Cluster addresses the inherently global nature of supply chain management in today's business environment.
Global Context of Business
The twin shock of globalization and the shift from industrial to post industrial business is altering the rules of competition and competitiveness worldwide, and Global Context provides insights into how these forces are impacting organizations, managers, and individuals alike. First, a framework that describes the current state of the global political economy, and which traces the evolution of the world economy from pre to post industrial production, will be presented. Then insights into the forces which have caused the ‘globalization’ of products, markets, consumers, and competition over the past fifty years or so will be provided, and the business implications of these forces at the individual, firm, and nation state levels will considered. Here, the major challenges confronting organizations as they seek to enter and/or operate in the multiple business environments that characterize the global economy today will be considered, exposing participants to some conceptual models and analytical approaches considered appropriate for problem solving and decision making in the global context. The course will conclude with consideration of nation building and the policies nation states might adopt in the face of global competition.
The course provides insights into what it will take to remain competitive in the rapidly changing and hyper-competitive global economy of the early 21st Century. How nations, organizations, and individuals in both developed and developing countries should react to emerging global trends is the core underlying theme of the course.
Global Immersions
Short-term (10-14 day) experiential learning courses offered in Asia, Latin America, Africa and Europe. These electives combine corporate and government site visits and nuts-and-bolts discussions with local leaders about timely business issues affecting the targeted countries or regions. There is an additional charge for these courses.
MBA Exchange
The Office of International Programs (OIP) administers the MBA Exchange Program. Through this program, UNC Kenan-Flagler MBAs are given the opportunity to study at another top-ranked business school around the world. UNC Kenan-Flagler has exchange relationships with over 40 of the highest-ranked business schools in Asia, Europe, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East.
Application Cluster covers areas such as project management, new product development, knowledge and innovation management, e-operations and other best practices.
- Retail Operations
Project Management
High-potential individuals can expect to spend much of their career participating in and leading projects. The reasons for this are twofold. First, along with strategy, effective implementation is now recognized as being critical to business success. Second, companies often use projects as proving-grounds for high-potential individuals; the rationale being that the skills required in managing a complex project are often the very skills required in managing a business.
On some level every project is unique, but in many respects business projects (new-product launches, geographic expansions, M&A integrations, outsourcing initiatives, IT projects, etc.) have much in common. It is this commonality that allows managers to apply general project management concepts and tools to a wide variety of superficially-different projects.
The aim of this course is to equip students with the concepts and tools necessary to be successful project managers (and team members). The goal of the course is not to take existing project-management specialists and further refine their expertise. Rather, the goal is to equip business generalists (i.e., any career concentration) with project management skills that will be useful throughout their careers. With that aim in mind, the course will focus on concepts and methods that are broadly applicable across a wide variety of business projects. The course will cover both qualitative and quantitative aspects of project management.
The course will have three modules:
- Fundamentals of Project Management
- Complex and Risky Projects
- External Parties and Contracts in Projects
Innovation & Product Development
Innovation & Product Development will deal with the following questions. How are companies tackling the innovation imperative? How can innovative products and services be created using design thinking? How can inspiration be obtained from internal and external sources? How can the voice-of-the-customer be “heard” and then “translated” into customer requirements, product specifications, and product prototypes?
We emphasize that an understanding and appreciation of the interaction between marketing, design, and engineering is necessary to develop successful new product offerings. This course will introduce several tools and techniques, including brainstorming techniques, the use of personas, the KJ Method (affinity diagrams) for structuring a large amount of qualitative information, quality function deployment, and conjoint analysis for quantitatively assessing the tradeoffs between attributes.
Key concepts will be learned via team and individual assignments, as well as case studies. Several in and out of class hands-on exercises will also be used to vividly demonstrate these concepts. A team project applying many of the tools and techniques is the centerpiece of this course.
Business Innovation & the Digital Age
Global competitive pressures, emerging economies, saturated domestic markets and demanding customers have brought companies (especially multinationals) to a dire crossroad – innovate or die. Innovation has been presented as the panacea for the severe turbulence of the new global economy – the “flat world”. Almost all the companies have embarked on their innovation journey. Some have adopted innovation as a tag line in their advertising. Others have started to appoint executives in charge of innovation. However, very few companies actually innovate! But nearly any and every action taken by a company is now loosely labeled as innovation. This could very well be the case because innovation is very poorly understood. This course seeks to address this issue by focusing on fundamental issues of: what is innovation and how do successful companies innovate.
This course is designed to provide you a strategic, broad and multidisciplinary perspective of business innovations (especially the digital age information technology based innovations) and how they are changing industries, enterprises' business processes and their relationship with suppliers and customers. We will examine broad classes of innovations, patterns of change initiated by digital age innovations, and best practices with respect to the adoption, implementation, and use of innovations. We will also examine how organizations are developing innovative business models around innovations to adapt to rapid changes in the marketplace. In summary, these areas of focus will provide you useful frameworks for understanding the business impact and opportunities that innovations (especially digital age innovation) bring about.
Perhaps the most dramatic shift in business during the early years of the 21 st century is the rise and fall of the dot.com sector. Unfortunately, many business executives have mistaken the fall of the dot.com for the fall of technology. As evidenced by the recent interest and investment in technology by business, nothing could be further from reality. Technology marches on and, to be successful, business leaders must be prepared to assess the coming waves of technology.
The first few years of the new millennium have been witness to the development of several emerging information technologies. These technologies have gone from being nascent “in-the-lab” to having an “in-the-field” impact. In the coming years, the impact of these emerging innovative information technologies will only become more and more pronounced in our networked information intensive economy. It is the intent of the course to prepare you to deploy, manage and preempt the disruptions caused by business innovations in the digital economy of 21st century.
Two additional electives courses can be taken from any of the above cluster courses or from the following:
Other GSCM Concentration Electives
Sustainable Enterprise
Objectives:
- Understand the challenges of co-alignment among business, society, and environment.
- Examine the history and context of sustainable development as a model and perspective for commerce.
- Explore alternative models of business and innovation pursed by sustainable enterprises.
- Discover best practices in leadership and transformation.
- Survey models of innovation in community competitiveness, technology, products, and revenue models to support next generation business.
Materials Covered: This course examines the origins, evolution, and current schools of thought around sustainable development. Study and discussion of sustainability as a theory of industrial development and accompanying models of commerce provides a context for understanding current models of business and its effects on other systems. The course also focuses on strategy, leadership, and innovation as applied to the Sustainable Enterprise. Through example as well as application of management theory, we will examine how today's leaders are creating programs of transformation for competition in the “next” generation of industry and commerce.
Consulting Skills & Frameworks
Consulting Skills and Frameworks is a course designed to provide MBA students with immediately usable tools for any team problem solving situation. The core consulting skill training will focus on the all-important “TAP” skills (teamwork, analysis, and presentations) and will introduce the TEAM FOCUS framework which covers the following aspects of team problem solving – Talk, Evaluate, Assist, Motivate, Frame, Organize, Collect, Understand and Synthesize. We will also cover a few of the most critical high level functional frameworks used by top consulting firms today. The course is geared toward any students considering a career in consulting (or other team oriented career track) as well as those students planning on working on a STAR/GBP/practicum action learning projects or participating in case competitions. The course methodology will involve discussions, individual case analysis, guest speakers and a team case competition.
Customer Relationship Management
This course is designed to prepare MBA students to be good consumers of marketing research. It will give you an overview of the tools and techniques used in marketing research to provide input to the many decisions that marketing, product, and brand managers have to make every day. It will provide an overview of the marketing research process, and give you insight into how to best prepare for commissioning or conducting a marketing research project and how to use the research information gained to help you in the decision-making process.
Marketing Analysis and Decision Making
This analytical case-based course will emphasize how to analyze data to support and guide marketing decisions. Marketing managers often need to understand and predict the response to one or more marketing variables such as price, advertising, competitors’ actions, or product changes. Examples of data and the accompanying decisions are (1) using historical data to examine the effect of advertising spending on sales, (2) analyzing data from a field experiment to test different advertising messages, and (3) exploring survey data to assess drivers of customer satisfaction and profitability. Other topics will include segmentation, positioning and forecasting. This will be a hands-on course using Excel and SPSS (a leading statistical analysis package). No prior familiarity with SPSS is assumed. The course will also use a web-based program, Management by the Numbers designed to build proficiency with the calculations and concepts that underlie the most popular marketing metrics and economic concepts used in decision-making.
Marketing Research
This course is designed to prepare MBA students to be good consumers of marketing research. It will give you an overview of the tools and techniques used in marketing research to provide input to the many decisions that marketing, product, and brand managers have to make every day. It will provide an overview of the marketing research process, and give you insight into how to best prepare for commissioning or conducting a marketing research project and how to use the research information gained to help you in the decision-making process.
What this course will not do is teach you how to DO market research. In my experience, most MBA students do not do marketing research; they are primarily consumers of marketing research. You will NOT learn a great deal about data tabulation or statistical techniques, though I may discuss this in class and point you in the right direction to gain more information on some methodology or statistical technique that intrigues you.
Global Financial Markets
This course develops the foundations for financial decisions in a global economic environment. It concentrates on four areas: markets, tools, corporations, and investment. The course analyzes the functioning of international financial markets and institutions and addresses the management of foreign exchange exposure in international corporations. The course continues by considering the valuation of international investments and the opportunities for international corporations in global debt and equity financing, e.g. in emerging markets. Finally, the course concludes with the benefits of global diversification in investment strategies.
Services Marketing
The primary objective of this course is to supplement basic marketing and marketing strategy courses by focusing on problems and strategies specific to marketing of services. Problems commonly encountered in marketing services - such as inability to inventory, difficulty in synchronizing demand and supply, difficulty in controlling quality - will be addressed. Strategies used by successful services marketers to overcome these difficulties will be discussed.
The emphasis will be on service universals rather than on any particular industry (such as bank marketing). However, concepts will be illustrated using cases, examples, and exercises in service industries such as financial planning, airlines, the hospitality industry, and communication as well as manufacturing and high tech industries (both of which depend heavily on services to provide value).
The course is designed not just for students with careers in services industries but also careers in goods industries with high service components (e.g., industrial products, high tech products, durable products).
Negotiations
Negotiations offers a basic introduction to negotiation with a heavy emphasis on the development of practical skills. Among other things, this course seeks to develop student capabilities in (a) analyzing your negotiation style, (b) planning for negotiations, (c) dealing with strong emotions, (e) employing "principled" negotiation techniques, and (f) assessing negotiations.
Applied Corporate Finance
The objective of this course is to learn how to resolve real corporate finance problems with the help of analysis, theory and judgment and in the context of a corporation's business strategy. Topics include valuation, capital structure, dividends, share repurchases, raising capital, financing and applications of options in Corporate Finance. This is a case study-based course, and students will form study groups to examine and analyze case studies for each topic covered in the course.
- Financial Modeling
- Managing Turnarounds
Pricing
Pricing is one of the most exciting and challenging topics in marketing. Mastery of pricing is essential to the profitable operation of any business. Nothing the marketer does has a more direct or greater impact on the bottom-line. It draws together all the diverse elements of marketing, such as product policy, advertising, market research, distribution, consumer behavior, competitive strategy and financial analysis. The various elements of marketing become an integrated whole when they are brought together for a pricing decision.
The objective of this course is to bring to students the fun and excitement of this interesting subject and to help them master its intricacies, vagaries and complexities.
> Year One Curriculum detail
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