Module review for DSC2006: Operations Management

Taken AY2014/2015 Semester 2


DSC2006: Operations Management

Although the course material appeared rather daunting, this was actually one of the modules that I scored better in. There is a significant amount of math involved, so do brush up on your H2 maths, mainly the statistics part. Thankfully, there is no calculus needed, so say goodbye to differentiation and integration. In fact, I would compare the math in the module to that of physics, where your understanding of the concept is of vital importance. The actual formula and mathematical calculations are not very complicated, but it is essential that you can identify clearly the variables needed.

The lecturer we had was Lucy Chen, and she did an okay job overall. While there were a few topics that she failed to explain clearly, the other topics were taught quite well. She also tried to bring in real life examples to her lectures, which helped a lot in contextualising the lecture materials.

I would recommend this course to those who wish to start their own business someday, as it definitely helped me to see certain business processes in a new light. For acc/biz students, this is a compulsory module, and I can see why that is so. Although I may not go into operations management as a career, I can foresee that the knowledge I gained from this course would benefit me greatly in future.

Assessment:
Class participation – 10%
Group project – 30%
Finals: 60%

Workload:
The workload was manageable, even though there was a group project involved. For the project, we had to pick out a theme within operations management and subsequently select 10 scholarly articles on that topic and write a report on it. My group mates were luckily all quite responsible and did their work well, so our project was relatively smooth sailing. As for class participation, my tutor would note down whenever someone answered a question, so it is best to come prepared to tutorials. Finals was actually all MCQ, which is actually a bad thing, since you wont get any “error carried forward” or extra/pity marks for your working if your final answer is wrong. However, the bell curve was probably not as steep, which explained why I did better for this module.


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