Supply Chain Engineering

Project
During the project Supply Chain Engineering, you will work in a team of fellow students on challenging consulting assignments, carried out within an industrial, trade or logistics services company. You will integrate all the new Supply Chain and managerial insights you will gain during this semester, together with project management, consulting and research skills. This project is executed within a company or external organization with a group of 4 students. The language is either Dutch or English, depending on the guest organization.
You learn about logistic processes; on their own and as an element in the well-orchestrated chain that generates value for end customers. By combining logistics and supply chain management concepts with methods and techniques from the field of operations research, you will be able to translate business models into well aligned processes. You learn to apply consulting and communicative skills for successful interventions. You are trained to work evidence based, in order to create new supply chains or to improve existing ones.

Supply Chain Planning and Theme-activities
Supply chain planning aims to provide ‘the right product, in the right place, at the right time’. Organizations typically have a ‘sales and operations planning (S&OP)’ in place to balance demand and supply at the tactical planning horizon. Departing from the S&OP-concept, students learn how to successfully do so with a focus on forecasting and network design. Next to the planning related knowledge the course provides a deep dive into contemporary supply chain (SC) issues, such as SC Resilience and SC Sustainability (e.g., related to CSRD). Theme activities are guest lectures, workshops, excursions and teambuilding.

Embark on an insightful exploration of smart logistics, where innovation and technology converge to shape the future of logistics. Integrated logistics, supply chains and last-mile logistics are developing swiftly, based on the latest insights in technology like data driven logistics, robotics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data and the internet of things.
Join us in the fascinating world of Smart Logistics, where logistics are organized with unprecedented efficiency, using the power of intelligent technology.
As your guide, we are pleased to introduce compelling topics in this module:
-    Trends in Last-Mile Delivery
-    Trends in Warehouse Automation
-    Data-Driven Logistics
-    Machine Learning with Matlab
-    Dashboards with PowerBI
-    Simulation with Flexsim

Many organizations run numerous improvement projects. These ambitious projects tend to tie up people for considerable amounts of time, on top of their normal tasks. Each individual project assesses a current problem within the organization as a whole. The question is, is there also improvement in the bottom-line performance of the organization after completing a project? If there is no process to address the constraint in the organization, there is also no focus which areas should be addressed. In this course you will learn to set up a process to address the restrictions within the organization and increase the performance of an organization as a whole.

Planning and scheduling are forms of decision-making that play an important role in most manufacturing and service industries. The planning and scheduling functions in a company typically use analytical techniques and heuristic methods to allocate its limited resources to the activities that have to be done. During this module, you will cover the following topics: 
•    MPC systems, S&OP, manufacturing and dispatching rules
•    Characteristics of service industries, Project and CPM
•    Scheduling: programming, shifting bottleneck procedures, annealing, Tabu search and Beam search
•    Interval scheduling, reservation systems and timetabling
•    Economic Lot Scheduling
•    Personnel scheduling problems

The module Consultancy skills helps you to develop effective consultancy and communication skills. We challenge you to examine the assumptions and interpretations you have about yourself and others. This will help you to examine the way you communicate, in order to become more effective in getting your message across as a professional consultant.

Students learn to assess circular opportunities within business models and supply chains of companies and advise on strategies to increase circularity based on a redesign of supply chain processes. This is achieved by working on a real-life case and by playing an online management game in which students steer an e-bike manufacturer aiming to pursue circular business opportunities. Lectures provide the required theoretical underpinnings.

During the Simulation module, you will learn how to use simulation study for production process improvement and management of production processes. After this course, you will be able to recognize when simulation can be used as a tool for decision-making, especially in a manufacturing environment. You will also be able to use the software Siemens Plant Simulation, make simple calculations as a means of validating a simulation study and to interpret and analyze the results from a simulation study.

Complete your exchange semester or year by taking one or two cross-departmental modules. You will receive ECTS credits when you complete a module successfully.

• Behavioural Change in Organizations
• Cambridge English B2 or C1
• Drama and Improvisation
• Dutch Language
• Dutch Society
• Economic Mindsets
• Innovation Research Competences for Urban Development  
• Intercultural Awareness
• Personal Leadership (7 Habits)
• Youth and Media Literacy

Want to know more about the exchange programme of Supply Chain Engineering? Check the course catalogue for more information about matters such as assessment and teaching methods.

Read the course catalogue