Operations: Lean and agile principles

Does your company experience challenges with the reliability of delivery to your customers and/or from your suppliers and/or do you keep too large an inventory? Maybe you are seeing many rush orders, a steady flow of plan changes and thus an inefficient utilisation of your resources - machines, materials and employees? Perhaps you would like to test new management and planning principles as for instance Lean, Agile, leagility and seru? Or you would like the development of new products/services to focus on both functionality and manufacturability? Maybe you are considering digitalising business processes or changing/optimising the company's ERP/IT system(s)?

If your company lacks the resources to analyse the above challenges and identify solutions based on solid operations management and business know-how, we have students who possess state-of-the-art knowledge within the field. During the course of the project, analyses and mappings will be made and subsequently used to define possible solutions in collaboration with the company. If relevant, it will be possible to test and qualify potential solutions in one of our labs, for instance through modelling and simulation.

The objective is that, after the project, the student will be better equipped to identify, formulate, communicate and, if relevant, implement the proposed solution. The communication aims to illustrate the feasibility of the proposed solution as well as the financial and business-related consequences of completing the project.

What can the company expect from this project?

  • Practice-oriented analyses and solution development: The student works with issues defined by the company with the purpose of developing realistic solutions to current operations management challenges.
  • Result: Analysis and solutions in the form of a presentation and a report (and lab tests, if relevant).
  • New colleagues: The company has the opportunity to find students for new projects as well as future employees.

What is required by the company?

  • The company's perceived challenges and its desire to improve performance or uncover new opportunities form the basis for an operations management project.
  • Conduct of meetings with the student during the course of the project.
  • Availability in terms of answering questions from the student by email or phone.

Timeline

As for the GMM study programme, these projects are relevant for 2nd, 6th and 7th semester students. The projects can also form part of the internship on the 5th semester.