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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Introduction to Operations Management by University of Pennsylvania

4.4
stars
2,722 ratings

About the Course

This comprehensive course delves into operations management and process improvement principles and techniques, providing you with the knowledge and skills necessary to identify and eliminate inefficiencies in your organization. You will gain a solid foundation in operations management by analyzing key concepts such as cost-quality trade-offs, the efficiency frontier, and system inhibitors. Get ready to delve into process analysis, where you'll identify and analyze steps in a process, implementing changes for enhanced outcomes. With practical exercises, including creating process flow diagrams and capacity calculations, you'll strengthen your analytical skills firsthand. Experience the power of optimizing flow within operations as you uncover waste sources and design efficient processes for maximum output, reduced costs, and heightened customer satisfaction. An in-depth exploration of Little's Law will equip you to make informed decisions on capacity planning and process improvements, optimizing inventory levels, reducing lead times, and enhancing supply chain coordination. Additionally, you'll learn to effectively manage variability, laying the groundwork for consistent and exceptional quality standards. Statistical analysis, problem-solving methodologies, and real-time information utilization will empower you to tackle issues, find root causes, and foster continuous improvement. Throughout the course, the focus remains on driving improvements and achieving excellence. Analyze, improve, and reimagine how work gets done, armed with the necessary tools and frameworks to enhance work processes across diverse industries. Join this course to analyze, improve, and reimagine how work gets done and to acquire the necessary tools and knowledge to make meaningful improvements in your organization's operations....

Top reviews

KR

Aug 24, 2020

Great Instruction by Prof Christian - very lucid and with real world examples. Learning a business skill is mostly learning observation.. Now I know what to observe when looking for productivity!

RE

Jan 28, 2021

I found this course to be very informational; the practice and homework were excellent to prepare for the exams, and the instructor covered all material in the lectures that was on the exams.

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26 - 50 of 621 Reviews for Introduction to Operations Management

By Jingxia P

•

Jan 11, 2016

I had taken another operation analytics courses from Wharton Coursera, so I was thinking this one may be just another supplemental course. However, out of my expectation, ALL material thought here are very extensive and need a lot of effort to pay attention to.

I especially like the format that the professor provided, i.e the review and example explanation sessions, just like TA office hour in the real world.

I also admire the way the professor explain the material, very serious and thorough thinking! Maybe this is the way how German treat knowledge, very cool!!

Five starts definitely!!

By Sushrut D M

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Apr 5, 2016

This is 3rd year engineering student form IIT Bombay. Attending this 4 week course is one of the reason which is making me to consider "MBA in operations management" as a career option after the graduation. Also I can understand that every point the instructor is making may have application in day to day life ( unlike engineering where we solve lots of enthalpy equation ignoring many energy loses). Also examples of subway and McDonald made easier to imagine the process and understand the topic well This course also encouraged me to attend more courses on operation management.

By Ying C

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May 2, 2024

Super educational professor that made this content heavy course enjoyable! It was to easy to grasp his points and to understand complex concepts. - He did a great job explaining them in a simple way - He highlighted key points on the lecture slides in a structured and easy to understand way - He used humorous & personal examples that are easy to relate to - He wrapped up each lecture and week and summaries with key learnings at the end I also personally appreciate his self-sarcasm and authenticity. GREAT job, Professor Christian Terwiesch!

By Opabunmi T E

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Mar 9, 2022

The review exercises at the end of each modules, coupled with the quizzes and homework helped to reiterate the principles in this course .... thereby making them stick. There was the connect within each modules as the concepts learnt in previous modules are transferred and utilised in succeeding modules.

Thank you.

By Ehsan A A

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May 3, 2019

I liked how the Professor explained different terms of Operations and Quality. This course will help me apply this knowledge of looking inside an operation and finding out the bottlenecks.

By Rohith R R

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Jan 11, 2022

This course looked at ops management from a more scientific perspective

By Carlos I

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Sep 4, 2022

Excellent course! Challenging until you grasp the concepts of OM

By Joel R A R

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Mar 10, 2022

really hard but porbably worth it just gave me tons of headaches

By alessandro v

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Dec 24, 2021

Excellent course with many practical examples.

By MURATHAN Y

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Oct 11, 2022

It was challenging but i have learned a lot.

By Alex B

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Jul 14, 2022

Fantastic course design and material

By Paolo M C

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Oct 11, 2022

Very informational

By Ritesh G

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Mar 20, 2022

This introductory course on operations management provides a steady preface to the renowned six sigma principle. It refreshed my memories of Japanese concepts such as Kanban, Jidoka, and Kaizen. It also charts a clear path to find the bottlenecks to optimize a process. Prof Christian Terwiesch's explanations and situational analysis add necessary insights about the taught topics in the course.

By Georgi U

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Jan 2, 2024

The structure and content of the course are above average and provide useful information and insights which can be easily applied in practice. However, the big issue of the course consists of the many errors which can be seen in the exams. As discussed in the forum, there more than a few occurrences in which correct answers are taken as wrong and, in reality, it is impossible to understand how to format the answer. Taking into account that in order to get a certificate, users are paying, this is not acceptable.

By Trent B

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Sep 26, 2017

slides didn't match lectures

By Brian G

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Aug 7, 2020

Several problems were not explained well. The Quizzes (which do not count toward final grade) did not provide the solutions - which would have allowed me to try and work the problem backward to find the solution. I understand not providing the test/assessment answers for integrity reasons, but not providing the answers in the quizzes only perpetuates the ignorance. The instructor's accent and verbiage use cased confusion. When definitions are defined by the use of a single word or another this can lead to lots of lost time and frustration. This is understandably a by-product of English not being their first language, they must be more careful in their discussions to avoid this in the future.

By Natalia B

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Apr 8, 2021

If there was zero stars, this course would get it!

Operations Management is a terrible course for beginners! I struggled a lot, as well as many other students. It is not an Introduction to Operations Management; it is designed for people who already have some knowledge in the field. I am not just saying that the course is difficult; I am saying that it is almost impossible to solve all the tests correctly without having some external help.

The quality of the course is very poor; both the sound and presentations was not user friendly. I barely learned anything because it was energy and time consuming even to understand what Professor was saying. Additionally, there were no explanations of how to get answers on slides. The topics and tasks on the lesson are not connected to homework assignments or final tests. You also have to have a good idea of how to use Excel.

I do not recommend anyone to take this course. It needs to be updated and changed completely!

It is very disappointing that the university with a good reputation can be okay with such a course.

By Nuno R

•

Jun 21, 2020

The lectures are ok and you think.. "Hey I got this!." Little you know....

The tests/quizzes and the final exams for each week have NOTHING to do with the lectures. This is clearly a cash grab to attract students to Wharton with the promise of a great education. If you're not a Operations Management student already, and if you are not in the field doing professional work in this area, then forget about it. 10h of study will turn into 100s of hours of trying to figure out the quizzes and exams to no avail.

The forum mentors rarely help, rather confuse even more by giving answers (or hints) that have nothing to do with the lectures.

The sample problems and questions are completely different from the mentors answers and different from the lectures which leads to even more confusion.

I've taken several other courses and specializations at Coursera (over 50 courses) and this is the WORSE course I ever experienced.

-nr

By Arash A

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Feb 8, 2021

Very poor designed course. I believe there are a lot of refinement required. Also, the logistics are not clear: Homework + Final each week???? And as learner you must go and check every thing everywhere in the course. The course material are all over the place and even some of the problems in the homework and final don't have an example, so good luck on passing the quizzes in 2 attempts (yes! questions are very tricky). And I believe since 2012 the instructor could spend more time to refine the course to add value to the student ... It didn't occurred to me.

By Prakash G

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Oct 5, 2020

The material in this course is challenging, but the professors communication makes it overly complicated. Wording on homeworks and exams are very confusing

By Edward T

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Dec 22, 2020

Wonderful course. The professor is a German who obviously has a great nature and intuition for efficiency and reduction of waste. You will go through the many different concepts of operations management, including processing times, process capacities, bottlenecks, process utilization, labor utilization, labor content, and OEE. You will be connecting this all to the Toyota Production System, which you will learn was a wonderful innovation on top of Frederick Taylor's initial pioneering of scientific management. This inspired me to make my own work flows more lean and you will see that modern software development actually gets much of its project management methodology from the "Kanban" system of the Japanese. The problems are appropriately challenging, and you will not just zoom through them like you do with other Coursera courses. He makes a good challenge to really make you rethink whether you truly comprehended the concepts!

By Amy S

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May 26, 2019

Incredible introduction to Operations and integral concepts for business functions outside of Operations. Having absolutely no prior statistics or probability theory education/knowledge, this course established said concepts through direct and easily understood practice problems and examples. Professor Terwiesch presents coursework clearly, providing visual working examples as he goes through the problems. I must say that professor Terwiesch is the only instructor yet whose humorous commentary contributed tremendously to the course content.

For me, there is nothing more exciting than productivity and efficiency. This course taught introductory methods for quantifying efficiency, establishing opinions and observations, and using said observations to further make efficient the process. A genuinely exhilarating insight into business processes.

By Varis C

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Jan 5, 2024

Great introduction to the field. A blend of mathematics and abstraction with real life issues and work. You certainly will view the world differently after taking this course. The professor always presents the topics very clearly and links well to relatable real life scenarios. Some written contents are lacking. As well as non-content related issues with the quizzes (number format, decimals, rounding, question wording etc.) which should be improved and cleaned up. However, it does not prove an obstacle to finishing the course, more if you want to achieve 100% scores.

By muthu r

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Feb 24, 2024

The course material and exam questions were designed to create an engaging and interactive learning experience. However, during week 3, I encountered some difficult challenges while trying to solve questions 4 and 6 on the quiz. This caused me to experience a high level of stress. Additionally, the discussion forum was not very helpful in resolving my mistakes, which made me realize the difference between face-to-face learning and e-learning. I believe I need more assistance and support to make my learning experience as comfortable as attending a live class.

By KUNAL Y P

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Apr 20, 2021

I would like to thank Professor Christian Terwiesch for conducting such great course. Course content was very helpful for knowledge building. PDF shared after each week was helpful to recall and revise already learnt concepts. All the assignments and exams are very well designed. Thank you very much Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Coursera for such great Initiative. I have learned the basics of operation management through this course and I am ready to apply the concepts of operation management in future work projects.