Max Zornada B.E. (Mech), Hons. M.B.A.

Max is a Management Educator and Consultant with extensive experience teaching MBA, Executive Education (since 1993) and Management Development Seminars and as a hands-on practitioner, consulting to major corporations on issues related to the achievement of Operational Excellence, throughout Australia, the US, Middle East, UK, Western Europe and Asia.

Max Zornada is an Adjunct Lecturer in the University of Adelaide Business School where he currently teaches the Operations Management and Business Performance Improvement in the MBA Program.  He has also taught Quality Management, E-Business, Project Management and Managing Innovation and Technology, and Statistical and Quantitative Analysis Subjects. He also delivers the Yellow Belt Advanced modules in the Professional Management Program and the Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt Advanced, Green Belt and Black Belt Public Programs.

He has presented the TQM and Data Analysis and Statistical Business Modelling subjects in the Australian Graduate School of Management's (AGSM), University of New South Wales, Executive MBA. Max was a Visiting Professor in the MBA program at the Consorzio MIP at the Politecnico di Milano in Milan early in 1998, where he taught Business Process Reengineering.

Max is also the Director of the Australian based Management Consulting and Education firm Henley Management Group. In this capacity he has presented many in-house Executive Programs for major corporations on Operational Excellence related topics such as Six Sigma, Lean Thinking, Lean Six Sigma, The Balanced Scorecard, Business Process Improvement, Project Management, Work Management both throughout Australia and internationally in Asia, the US, UK, Italy and the Middle East.

Prior to founding HMG, Max spent several years with the London based international management and technology consultancy PA Consulting Group, after holding various managerial and professional engineering positions in the chemicals processing and petrochemicals industry with Adelaide and Wallaroo Fertilisers, ICI and Santos.

From his base in Adelaide, South Australia, Max maintains an active local, Australian and International consulting and Management Education practice, with a focus on capital intensive (petrochemical, energy and chemicals) businesses, and back-office operations in financial services and services organisations. In recent years, a major focus of his consulting activity has been Lean Six Sigma and Process Improvement implementation in Aerospace, Mining and Insurance industry contexts.

Max Zornada may be contacted at

The University of Adelaide Business School

Level 10 10 Pultney Street, Adelaide, 5005, South Australia.

Tel: +61 8 8303 5525/ Fax: +61 8 8223 4782.

Email: max.zornada@adelaide.edu.au

Office Location: Room 10.44, 10 Pulteney Street

1. An overview of Service and Operations Management as management function in general.
2. An understanding of the impact Operational Capability has on decision making and options in Business Strategy and the linkage to Operations Strategy.
3. An understanding of the different types of operations process types on which operational capability can be based and the strategic implications of the process choice decision.
4. An understanding of the relationship between Business Strategy, Operations Strategy, Process Type, Organisation and Control structures the impacts these have on managerial decision making and choices.
5. An understanding of the key operations strategy factors addressed in points 2-4 specifically applied to Service Operations.
6. Knowledge and understanding of the key operational levers that can be applied to the management of service operations and the proactive management of customer experience.
7. Knowledge and understanding of how an operations strategy is implemented, including facility location, process design and process layout decisions.
8. Knowledge and skills in the application of key operations strategy implementation tools and techniques including work and time analysis, development of standard times, development of process layout and assembly line balancing.
9. An appreciation of the role of strategic operations planning and skill in constructing and optimising a strategic operations plan.
10. An appreciation of the key inventory and materials management techniques applied in operations including independent demand methods (EOQ) and dependent demand methods (MPR, MRP II and ERP);
11. An appreciation of the role of IT systems such as MRP II and ERP in operations.
12. Knowledge and skills required to determine and optimal inventory management policy.
13. Knowledge and skills in the application of key operations scheduling methods to various types of processes.
14. An understanding of Lean Thinking, concepts, tools and techniques including Toyota Production System concepts/Just in Time manufacturing.
15. Knowledge and understanding of the application of strategic and value based approaches to procurement.
16. Knowledge and understanding of key issues pertaining to Supply Chain Management, including the “Bull Whip Effect”
17. Knowledge and understanding of key concepts, tools and techniques pertaining to the management of transaction based service processes.
18. Knowledge, understanding and skills in the development of an Acceptance Sampling based Quality Control strategy.
19. An overview and appreciation of statistical process control.
20. An overview and appreciation of approaches to improving business performance through operations.

        The text for this course is:

 Slack, Nigel., Chambers, Stuart., Johnston, Robert and Betts, Alan., Operations and Process Management, Principles and Practices for Strategic Impact, 2nd Edition, FT Prentice Hall, 2009. (or later edition if available)

Optional additional supplementary reading:

Goldratt, Eliyahu M. and Cox, Jeff. The Goal, Gower, (latest available edition)

Powerpoint slides and additional resources in the form of spreadsheet models, additional readings and worksheets in support of the lecture session activities during the intensive sessions will be made available for download in softcopy from myUni.

Operations Management is offered as a 2 x 3 day intensive program and use a mix of learning methods.

Participants will be introduced to certain concepts, techniques or issues through formal lecture presentations. It is expected that lecture presentations will be interwoven with questions, comments and discussion initiated by participants.

Management games/simulations, group work, individual work, case studies and presentations will be used to provide opportunities to reinforce concepts and practice techniques or skills.

Two theory assignments and a practical “real world” application project will be used to reinforce the learnings in this subject.

Students should allocate approximately eight hours per week of study time to do appropriate readings, project work and assignments in addition to attendance at scheduled lecture sessions.

Group Project                                                       15%

Group Project Presentation                                  15%

Participation                                                          10%

Individual Assignment

Two individual assignments will be distributed during the lectures.

Assignment 1 will be distributed during lecture session 2 and is due at lecture session 4. Word limit is 2,500 words.

Assignment 2 will be distributed during the week 7 lecture and will be due in at the week 9 lecture. Word limit is 2,500 words.

Group Project

A team based field report on how some selected organisation has approached a particular operations management problem or issue, how they apply a particular or various operations management principles to their specific operational environment eg. Supply Chain Management, Operations Scheduling, Quality Management etc. will be required to be submitted by the final intensive session.

This will ideally be based on a “live” company example that students have access to or alternately, could be research based. Eg. consider a well known company where there is a lot of information available in the public domain. The report should attempt to provide a critical assessment based on concepts and principles learning during the subject and make recommendations for improvement.

Each group should submit a brief (half a page at the most) write up of what they propose to do for the group project component by the end of week 2. The final group report is due in at the final lecture session. Word limit 2,500 words.

Group Presentation

Teams will be required to prepare a 20 minute presentation on their project to be delivered during the final scheduled lecture session. All members of the team will be required to present. Time keeping will be strictly enforced.

In addition to achieving a course mark of at least 50%, students need to attain an average of fifty percent (50%) across all the individually assessed items, considered as a whole, in order to pass the course.

For information on the University’s Assessment for Coursework Programs Policy refer to:

www.adelaide.edu.au/policies/700/

Presentation of Assignments

· Please be sure to retain a copy for yourself of all assignments submitted.

· Please attach an ‘Assignment Cover Sheet’, which is signed and dated by you before submission.

· All group assignments must be attached to a ‘Group Assignment Cover Sheet’, which must be signed and dated by all group members before submission. All team members are expected to contribute approximately equally to a group assignment.

· Lecturers can refuse to accept assignments, which do not have a signed acknowledgement of the University’s policy on plagiarism.

Assignment Guidelines including Referencing Details

A copy of the Postgraduate Programs: Communication Skills Guide will have been given to you at the beginning of your program. This guide will assist you structure your assignments. A copy of the guide can also be downloaded from http://www.business.adelaide.edu.au/current/mba/download/2009MBACommSkillsGuide.pdf

This publication also provides guidelines on a range of other important communication skills including writing essays and management reports, making oral presentations etc.

In preparing any written piece of assessment for your postgraduate studies it is important to draw on the relevant ‘literature’ to support critical analysis. Also essential is to reference the literature used. Correct referencing is important because it identifies the source of the ideas and arguments that you present, and sometimes the source of the actual words you use, and helps to avoid the problem of plagiarism. (Further information on plagiarism is provided later in this course outline.)

The Harvard system is widely used in the Business School. Guidelines for the use of this style of referencing can be found in the Communication Skills Guide.

Further assistance with referencing is available from the Faculty’s Learning Support Advisors. The contact details are provided on page 6 of the Communication Skills Guide.

Late Assignment Submission

Students are expected to submit their work by the due date to maintain a fair and equitable system. Extensions will generally only be given for medical or other serious reasons. All requests for extensions must be emailed to the lecturer in charge of the course no less than 36 hours before the due date. Each request will be assessed on its merits. A late assignment (without prior arrangement) will be penalised by a 5% mark reduction for each day that it is late.

Return of Assignments

Lecturer’s aim to mark and return assignments to students within two (2) weeks of the due date with written feedback. Students are responsible for collecting their marked assignments from either their tutorials or lectures. If assignments aren’t collected after two (2) weeks, the assignments will be available at the Student Hub for two (2) weeks. The remaining assignments will only be posted out to the students, if the correct mailing addresses are on the assignments.