Seyed Iravani
Professor of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences, McCormick School of Engineering
Professor of Operations Management (Courtesy)
Seyed Iravani is the professor Industrial Engineering and Management Science at the McCormick School of Engineering & Applied Science, and the professor of Operations Management (courtesy) at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. His research focuses on the applications of stochastic processes, game theory, social networks and queueing theory to the design and control of manufacturing, service operations systems, health care, supply chains, and non-profit systems focusing on improving their flexibility, coordination, and responsiveness. He develops mathematical models that provide scientific principles to improve the performance of such systems.
Professor Iravani has worked with a wide range of companies in different industry to improve their performance, including GM, Ford, Motorola, GE, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Chicago Food Depository, Facebook, and Roti Mediterranean Restaurants, among others. He has been the Departmental Editor for the journals Service Science, and IIE Transactions, and Associate Editor for the journals Management Science, Operations Research, Naval Research Logistics.
Designing and Managing Business Processes (OPNS-440-0)
The course focuses on designing and managing business processes to best support the strategic objectives of the organization and the needs of the market segments being served. We will first develop a strategic framework that allows a process designer to understand what the process needs to do particularly well (process competence) based on the needs of the customer being served. We then define key operational metrics - flow time, throughput, inventory, cost and quality - and link them to financial measures of performance. Such a linkage allows a manager to identify operational metrics along which a process needs to excel or improve. We then discuss how various operational metrics can be tracked and measured. The rest of the course then focuses on identifying design and management levers that allow a manager to improve process performance along each of the key operational metrics. Prerequisites: Student must be part of the MMM Program.
Operations Management (OPNS-430-0)
1Ys: This course is typically waived through the admissions process or the equivalent course Operations Management (Turbo) (OPNS-438A) was completed during the Summer term. MMMs: This course is equivalent to the MMM core course Designing and Managing Business Processes (OPNS-440) Operations management is the management of business processes--that is, the management of the recurring activities of a firm. This course aims to familiarize students with the problems and issues confronting operations managers, and to provide the language, concepts, insights and tools to deal with these issues to gain competitive advantage through operations. We examine how different business strategies require different business processes and how different operational capabilities allow and support different strategies to gain competitive advantage. A process view of operations is used to analyze different key operational dimensions such as capacity management, cycle time management, supply chain and logistics management, and quality management. Finally, we connect to recent developments such as lean or world-class manufacturing, just-in-time operations, time-based competition and business re-engineering.
