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Master of Supply Chain Management Curriculum

Technological change has vastly expanded the scope and importance of supply chains. With so much on the line, we designed a curriculum that blends industry best practices, business acumen, strategy, and leadership skills. The combination of Foster’s world-class faculty, industry leaders in the classroom, and hands-on experience will help you drive innovation in your organization. Orientation prepares you for success from day one and includes powerful Building Effective Teams sessions with Professor Greg Bigley.

Prior to orientation, each student completes the Foster Excel for Business course—an online module that ensures you know spreadsheet fundamentals and teaches you advanced features invaluable in your coursework and throughout your career.

Highlights

Flexible schedule

MSCM’s flexible schedule allows you to continue to work full-time.

Classes meet:
Mondays and Wednesdays, 6 – 9:30pm
Every other Saturday, 8:30am – 4:30pm

Outside class study time typically ranges between 15-20 hours a week.

See 12-month calendar

Build Connections

Networking with supply chain leaders is built directly into the MSCM curriculum. You’ll gain critical access to esteemed Foster faculty, industry leaders, and fellow supply chain professionals.

MSCM Student Experience

Courses

The Master of Supply Chain Management is a 12-month (4 quarters), degree program that begins in summer quarter of each year and completes in spring. MSCM is a STEM degree program. See the tabs below for a list of all Master of Supply Chain Management classes and course descriptions by quarter breakdown.

MSCM courses at-a-glance: 44 credits required

SCM 500: Finance and Accounting for Supply Chain Managers
SCM 501: Probability and Statistics
SCM 502: Negotiations
SCM 503: Leadership and Professional Development
SCM 504: Building Effective Teams
SCM 510: Marketing Strategy and Channel Management
SCM 511: Strategic Sourcing and Procurement
SCM 512: Spreadsheet Modeling for Business Enterprise
SCM 513: Operations Management and Process Analysis
SCM 520: Forecasting, Inventory Management and SC Analytics
SCM 521: Managing Supply Chain Projects
SCM 522: Lean Management, Total Quality and Six Sigma
SCM 523: Competitive Strategy
SCM 530: Data Analytics
SCM 531: Enterprise Systems and Integration
SCM 532: Global Supply Chain and Logistics
SCM 533: Special Topics in Supply Chain Management
SCM 533: Special Topics in Supply Chain Management – Elective
SCM 599: Supply Chain Leader Series & Practicum

Course TitleDetails

Finance and Accounting for Supply Chain Managers Concepts and tools needed to understand, apply, and explain finance and accounting information for managerial decision and performance evaluation.
Probability and Statistics Statistical tools, techniques, and models for aiding management decisions. Use of spreadsheets in basic business problems. Frequency and probability distributions, random sampling and standard errors, testing hypothesis, ANOVA, multiple regression models, and logistic regression models.
Building Effective Teams Learn principles of building effective work teams to accomplish objectives.
Spreadsheet Modeling for Business Enterprise Introduction to formulation and modeling of business problems in a spreadsheet environment. Prerequisite: SCM 501 or equivalent.
Competitive Strategy Develops students’ ability to think as practicing executives; and provides practice in analyzing, evaluating, and modifying organizations’ strategies in light of changing macro-economic conditions. Broadly, the emphasis will be on highlighting the interplay between competitive strategy and supply chain management concepts.
Supply Chain Leader Series Provides the capstone learning experience. Includes seminars given by supply chain leaders, a final quarter student report and student project are assigned. Provides students the opportunity to complement their in-class learning experience with related practical experience by working on a project.

Course TitleDetails

Negotiations for Supply Chain Management Supply chain management requires analytical skills to discover optimal solutions to problems, and a broad array of negotiation skills is needed for these solutions to be accepted and implemented. The course allows participants the opportunity to develop these skills experientially and to understand negotiations in useful analytic frameworks. This course is a part of the business component. Topics covered include:

  • Dispute resolution, conflict and mediation
  • Multi-party negotiations
  • Become familiar with the dynamics of power, of culture, of coalitions, of interests, or relationships, and of emotions that affect human interactions
Building Effective Teams Learn principles of building effective work teams to accomplish objectives. This course is part of the business component. Topics covered include:

  • Benefits of teamwork
  • Design and build your team
  • Dimensions of team performance
Strategic Sourcing and Procurement Discusses strategic sourcing and procurement in Supply Chains. Topics such as Total Cost of Ownership, Outsourcing, E-Sourcing / Auctions, Spend Analytics, Supply Contracts and Supplier Scorecard will be covered. This course is a part of the supply chain component. Topics covered include:

  • Supplier selection decisions
  • Identify risks related to sourcing
  • Design procurement processes for different item-types and analyze spend
  • Develop sourcing strategies aligned with business strategies
  • Analyze total cost of ownership for make-or-buy decisions
Operations Management and Process Analysis Introduction to Operations Management, which focuses on efficient operations and on time delivery of goods and services. Prerequisite: SCM 501 or equivalent. This course is a part of the supply chain component. Topics covered include:

  • Introduction to operations management
  • Process and flow management
  • Theory of constraints
  • Capacity analysis and design
  • Queues and waiting Lines
Managing Supply Chain Projects Examines the management of complex projects. Specific topics include project teams, project selec-tion, scheduling and budgeting, risk management, and monitoring and control. We will also discuss PM software products, and relationships between these products and the requirements of managing risky projects in today’s economic environment. This course is a part of the supply chain component. Topics covered include:

  • Project Selection
  • Project Planning, Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
  • Project Risk Management
  • Project Assessment and Control,
  • Earned Value Management (EVM)
  • Project Scheduling (CPM and PERT), Budgeting, and Time-Cost Tradeoffs
  • Resource Allocation in Project, Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM)
Data Analytics Explores issues related to data analytics. Topics include Descriptive Analytics, Predictive Analytics, and Prescriptive Analytics. Real-world applications in supply chain management. This course is a part of the business component. Topics covered include:

  • Visualization (Descriptive and Inferential Analytics)
  • Clustering (Descriptive and Predictive Analytics)
  • Prediction (Predictive Analytics)
  • Classification (Predictive Analytics)
  • Data Preparation and Cleaning
Supply Chain Leader Series & Practicum Provides the capstone learning experience. Includes seminars given by supply chain leaders, a final quarter student report and student project are assigned. Provides students the opportunity to complement their in-class learning experience with related practical experience by working on a project. This course is a part of the industry component.

Course TitleDetails

Building Effective Teams Learn principles of building effective work teams to accomplish objectives. This course is part of the business component. Topics covered include:

  • Benefits of teamwork
  • Design and build your team
  • Dimensions of team performance
Marketing Strategy and Channel Management Analysis and decision-making in management of exchange processes with customers. Analysis of market forces and choice of marketing strategy, objectives, and marketing mix variables. This course is a part of the business component. Topics covered during this course include:

  • Marketing analysis
  • Marketing implementation
  • Marketing objectives and strategy
  • Marketing ethics
Forecasting, Inventory Management and SC Analytics Forecasting methods, deterministic and stochastic inventory models, lot-sizing and MRP, JIT, design for logistics, bull-whip effect and other contemporary topics are introduced. Prerequisite: SCM 501, SCM 511, SCM 513. This course is a part of the supply chain component. Topics covered include:

  • Forecasting models
  • Lot-sizing and Material Requirement Planning (MRP)
  • Deterministic Inventory Models, Stochastic Inventory Models
  • Time Series, Moving Average, Exponential Smoothing, Holt and Winter’s Model
Lean Management, Total Quality and Six Sigma Describes the basic principles, tools, and methods of Lean and Six Sigma. Discusses their implementation in variety of settings and shows how to apply them in real supply chains. This course is a part of the supply chain component. Topics covered include:

  • Seven wastes
  • Value stream Mapping
  • Quality tools
  • One-piece flow
  • DMAIC
  • Lean office
Global Supply Chain and Logistics Examines the designing and managing complex global supply chains. Specific topics include global SC design, logistics and sourcing, supply chain inventory models, postponement, supply integration and contracts. We will also discuss the interrelation between supply chain management and product design. This course is a part of the supply chain component. Topics covered include:

  • Supply chain and product design
  • Supply chain inventory models
  • Supply integration and contracts
  • Network and supply chain design
  • Global supply chain design, logistics, and sourcing
Supply Chain Leader Series & Practicum Provides the capstone learning experience. Includes seminars given by supply chain leaders, a final quarter student report and student project are assigned. Provides students the opportunity to complement their in-class learning experience with related practical experience by working on a project. This course is a part of the industry component.

Course TitleDetails

Leadership and Professional Development Assessment and development of written and oral communication to develop strong interpersonal and leadership skills needed to succeed in the cross-functional and cross-cultural team environments common in a global supply chain environment. This course is a part of the business component. While in the course, students will:

  • Work in teams
  • Deliver clear, effective and persuasive presentations
  • Implement change in an organization
  • Create a leadership skills development plan
Enterprise Systems and Integration Provides an overall understanding of the complex role of information systems in transforming organizational processes and integrating them as part of an enterprise system. Topics include the concept of process-enabling information technologies and enterprise resource planning systems that support supply chain management processes. This course is a part of the business component. Topics covered include:

  • Master data
  • Business process integration
  • Enterprise system implementation
  • Enterprise architecture
Special Topics in Supply Chain Management Aims to review current topics of supply chain management such as forming teams (selecting team members and developing shared mental models), revenue management, new product design and development, and shaping organizational cultures. This course is a part of the supply chain component. Topics covered include:

  • Motivation and building influence
  • Cognitive and social biases in decision-making
  • Team process (managing conflict, learning, and adapting)
Supply Chain Leader Series & Practicum Provides the capstone learning experience. Includes seminars given by supply chain leaders, a final quarter student report and student project are assigned. Provides students the opportunity to complement their in-class learning experience with related practical experience by working on a project. This course is a part of the industry component.

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