Supply Chain Management MBA Specialization Summer Course

The global business environment offers firms the chance of allocating their value adding activities around the world in order to increase efficiency and lower costs. Foreign direct investment and the types of investment, as well as tax regimes and availability of production factors such as technology and labor are crucial when creating a global strategy. Should firms engage in offshoring or nearshoring, and what if they were to reshore their activities? This course will provide you with insights in how firms can maximize the effectiveness by developing a global supply chain.

Cash is King, and the Supply Chain area is no exception to this. Working Capital Management is gaining lots of attention because of the clear links with suppliers, customers and inventories. This course investigates the area of Supply Chain Finance (SCF) and how for example developments like the Blockchain Technology (BCT) allows businesses to come together in partnerships and accelerate cash flows throughout the supply chain. BCT changes the way individuals and corporations exchange value and information over the Internet. The blockchain system with its distributed ledgers technologies could expedite the processes and lower the overall costs of financing programs, as well as reducing complexity and make data sharing more secure, accurate and efficient. The course will investigate these areas.

The capacity to design and manage projects is a critical skill to access funding sources in the modern global economy. This is especially true in the cross-functional environment crossing company boundaries at the heart of the supply chain. Project managers are expected to have a broad understanding of project design and management related issues. They need to have a basic understanding of the criteria for initiating, planning, implementing and closing effective projects, and be multi-skilled in order to effectively tackle the challenges of private sector projects of today. This course provides the practical tools needed to be a successful project manager.

This course looks to the future, studying the changes taking place around us that will one day impact on the supply chain. The course looks at three areas for change. First innovation, where we look for example at the potential impact of automated transportation, artificial intelligence and the internet of things. Secondly, we consider economic and demographic patterns, observing changes in wealth and people and their behavior as citizens and as consumers, and how this will affect the positioning of supply chains in the future, embedded in the global geopolitical context. Finally, we consider the triple bottom line, how supply chains need to react to governmental and societal pressures to create more responsible organizations.