Upon successful completion of this course, students will have reliably demonstrated the ability to:

1. Identify the goal of a supply chain, and evaluate the impact of supply chain decisions on the success of a firm.
2. Categorize the performance measures that are relevant to a supply chain.
3. Examine the role of forecasting as a basis for supply chain planning, and create a time series forecast using moving averages, exponential smoothing, and regression.
4. Explain the "bullwhip effect", and illustrate through examples, the flow of material between supply chain partners.
5. Compare the major applications of supply chain information technology.

General-purpose subjects: Global SC planning, SC strategy (Fisher model), SCFinance, Global purchasing, SC risk and resilience; SC sustainability.

Subjects focused on the construction industry: Evolutions of the organizational models and FM adoption life cycle, Decisional criteria, long term partnerships and commercial models, FM contracts, Due Diligence and Transition Management, Business support technologies, Maintenance Management Strategy and Business Case, Six Sigma, Benchmarking and Financial control via GAAP

Guest speeches from companies (examples): Global Development at Whirlpool corporation, A holistic approach to the supply chain management: the Italian distribution center of Baxter

Cases: Hp, Welch, M.Market, Lux., Veropoulos, Candy, Zara, Scott, J-Fruit, C&D, Bessi, P&G, Crocs, Amazon

Production Management, Operations managament

 Broadly speaking the exam consists in an oral test, taken the same day the exam is scheduled (or the next one, or anyway within the week the exam is scheduled).

Depending on the number of people involved in the process, students who are supposed to take the exam might be required to take one (or sometimes more than one) written questions, followed by an oral test (often the same day).

Exams deal with the whole course, i.e. all the subjects covered in every class, including cases, exercises, games, speeches of practitioners or whatever else.

Within the course (during the regular semester), two specific classes will be devoted respectively to the mid-term exam and to the early-bird exam. The outputs of these classes can be considered as self-evaluation or they can be evaluated on demand. If you get a passing grade (i.e. a grade greater than or equal to 18 out of 30) – you will be given a final mark (usually the average value of the two marks – provided that both of them are good), which could be accepted and recorded in the exam book. Recording must be accomplished within the session (winter or summer) just after the end of the classes: marks cannot be “frozen” any longer.

Should you are willing to improve your mark – even once you have a passing grade after the mid-term and the early-bird exam – you can anyway take an additional oral test. However, this additional oral test might either improve or worsen your seminal mark or even it might result in a poor overall grade, which makes you undertake again the exam (starting from scratch.

Seldom, the final mark you are given does not match the average value of the mid-term grade and the early-bird one. E.g., 16 and 20 usually do not lead to 18 as final grade. Likewise 16 and 30 or even 18 and 30. Rarely, you could be given 18 as final mark without the opportunity of improving it through any additional oral test. This means that something is not crystal-clear and – to get more – you have to undertake a “new” exam from the beginning (starting from scratch).

Besides, students are given the opportunity to present their analyses of some (or all) case studies developed along the semester, which entitles them to get an additional mark (weighted in a similar way as the early bird and the mid term exam) to form their final grade. Team working to handle case studies is warmly recommended.