Curriculum and Courses
Each of the courses in the table below links to a fuller description.
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Engineering Management |
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Business |
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Systems Engineering |
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Leadership Project |
Course Descriptions
Automotive Engineering Statistics
This course is intended to refresh fundamental probability and statistics concepts for working engineers prior to other courses in the program that use those concepts extensively. Students also develop skills in analyzing randomness in a wide range of situations, and learn to recognize opportunities to apply statistics to real world problems.
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Global Automotive Marketing Strategy
This course is designed to provide an overview of the marketing function. A major global marketing team project is conducted during the semester. Upon successful completion of this course, students will:
- Understand how their career responsibilities are affected by marketing goals and activities
- Understand how marketing plans are developed and the methods for their evaluation
- Use marketing concepts to monitor the business performance of their business unit
- Understand critical marketing concepts such as segmentation, customer satisfaction and loyalty measurement, product development, and distribution/ supply chain management
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Finance and Cost Accounting
The central concepts of finance and managerial accounting are combined in this course. From a financial perspective the purpose of the course is to demonstrate how engineering decisions can impact the financial goals of the company. The course gives managers a financial perspective on company strategies, value creation, and where the engineering function fits in. Managerial accounting is concerned with providing financial information to users internal to the firm. Students will learn the fundamental principles of managerial accounting used to support decisions for engineering and manufacturing management control processes.
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Leadership of the Technical Organization
This course combines contemporary and classic organizational theories with the application of those theories to real situations in students' companies. While students develop a systematic and critical perspective toward organizational theory, the primary focus of the course is translating analysis into action to positively change their organizations. A highly interactive classroom environment promotes a cross-fertilization of ideas and organizational perspectives.
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Operations Research Models for Automotive Systems (Deterministic Optimization)
This course gives an engineering manager the tools to formulate models of problems concerning the efficient organization and management of complex systems, solve these models to optimality, and then interpret the solutions obtained. Students develop skills in recognizing and formulating deterministic optimization models and gain an appreciation for the role of sensitivity analysis. The course will discuss methods for quantifying the impact of specific constraints on the overall performance of a system. Production scheduling, product mix planning, supply chain management, logistics, manpower planning, routing and scheduling, financial planning, and prototype builds are some of the application areas that are discussed.
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Information Systems
This course will present information technologies and their applications in manufacturing and product development environments. Students will learn how information systems are used to make organizations leaner and more integrated across functions. They will understand how to employ IT systems for knowledge management - sharing product and manufacturing requirements throughout the design, development, and manufacturing cycle, reducing waste and speeding time to market.
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Stochastic Systems (Simulation)
This course is designed to help students integrate an understanding of random system behavior into their analyses of company operations. Students learn to recognize situations appropriate for the application of simulation techniques, and to manage and effectively communicate with individuals providing simulation support. Students gain the knowledge and tools to be educated consumers of simulation studies within their organization.
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Agile Systems
Students will develop knowledge, skills, and techniques for use in:
- Employing best practices in transitioning mass production systems to lean manufacturing systems
- Recognizing the corruptive influence of variability on plant performance
- Characterizing basic factory dynamics as a function of production control mechanism/strategy (push vs. pull/hybrids)
- Applying the concept of agility to manufacturing, product development, and other functions
- Deploying supply chain management to improve the enterprise
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Quality Management and Leadership
This course covers leadership issues related to the broad field of quality and process improvement. Technical topics include customer focus, quality tools, statistical approach to process control and improvement, benchmarking, and design quality. Non-technical topics include appraisals, teamwork, Deming's description of profound knowledge, and supplier relationships. Effective implementation of Six Sigma is another major course topic. Students gain an ability to apply course concepts and skills to implementing quality management and process improvements, and to overcome common implementation barriers. Team projects focus on real issues that students face in their organizations.
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Robust Design and Reliability Engineering
This course is designed to use the "application-to-theory" approach to help students:
- Understand the concepts of robust design and reliability engineering methods
- Plan a designed experiment and analyze the results
- Learn the physics-of-failure and statistical approaches to reliability engineering
- Understand the product development process and how to integrate these methods into it
- Understand the merits and limitations of each method
- Ask appropriate questions in the product development process to design reliability/quality into the product
- Identify opportunities for application of these methods in specific working environments
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Project Management
This course imparts an appreciation for the role and importance of project management in delivering complex engineering projects on time, within budget and performance specifications. Students will gain an enhanced understanding of the unique challenges which complex engineering projects present, and are provided with a project management "tool box" along with detailed knowledge of the application of each tool.
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Engineering Risk and Decision Analysis
The course focuses on complex technical decisions that are often made in the face of major uncertainty and may involve tradeoffs amongst multiple objectives. The course will provide students with both descriptive and analytic modeling tools and related software that are designed to improve the quality and efficiency of decision making. The readings and discussions also explore common forecasting and decision making biases. A key element of this course involves learning to interview decision-makers, subject matter experts and technical specialists to determine preferences and obtain less-biased forecasts.
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Management of Technology Change
This course examines the development and implementation of technology from two perspectives: 1) The diffusion of innovations, focusing on the communication process of introducing innovations in a social system and examining their adoption over time, and 2) Contextual analysis, concentrating on the interaction between technological systems, organizational structure and communication channels, strategy, human resource policies, leadership styles, and the cultures of organizations and nations. Course Goals include:
Providing frameworks, concepts and tools for thinking about, planning, and implementing technology change
Giving students the opportunity to apply what they are learning to a technology change situation in their work setting
Helping students understand cross-cultural business interactions
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