Main themes

This course aims to give students the ability to identify the real nature of production management problems, to discover the factors that shape their decision-making, and to make intelligent decisions about the best policy to pursue and the best technique to apply. To this end, the course will attempt to enable students to familiarise themselves with the basic principles, procedures, models and techniques, and to have a critical understanding of them: it will seek to do this by giving them the skills to discriminate, and the ability to distinguish between what is valid and what is less so. Students will also understand the importance of the human factor in production management.

Content and teaching methods

Content
Production constitutes the corpus of approaches that combine to create products (i.e. goods or services). It is normally associated with what happens on the shop floor, but it is also to be found in such places as hospitals, supermarkets and offices.
Over and above the development of production policies, which is a task for a company's senior management, production management embraces three main fields of activity: production system design, implementation, and monitoring and operation. These three activities rely on so-called organisational methodology and techniques, and on mathematical and statistical models; this is particularly true when seeking optimal solutions.
The course will address the main problems of production management by focusing on their particular features and associated models, in addition to the methodology of systems design.
Methodology
The teaching methodology will vary according to the subject-matter: it will range from talks and syntheses, and additional information sessions that respond to students' questions, to prior or consecutive reading, the analysis of substantive situations in the form of simple examples or case studies examined during exercise sessions. The methodology may involve two or more of these simultaneously.

Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

The examination will include the analysis of a short case; this will normally be carried out by a group of four students. The solution will be presented in the form of a detailed report, and will be defended individually at the oral examination.

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