Summary

Continuous improvement deals with improvement of products and services in order to deliver value to customers. This course will arm students with practical skills and hands-on tools for evaluating and improving products and services' performance and leading systematic change in companies.

Content

Keywords

Continuous improvement, Value Chain, Engineering Leadership, Emotional Intelligence, Leading Change, Lean, Leading Digital Transformation.

Learning Prerequisites

Required courses

• Probability and Statistics

Recommended courses

• Production Management (Fall semester)

Important concepts to start the course

• Data analysis with Excel
• Active engagement
• Advanced level of probability and statistics
• Openness and willingness to make change and transformation

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course, the student must be able to:

• Understand the fundamentals of change initiatives (from continuous improvement to transformation)
• Learning how to communicate change and manage emotions of change
• Evaluate and analyze a system performance
• Design and execute a change plan for a system with people and not for them

Transversal skills

• Plan and carry out activities in a way which makes optimal use of available time and other resources.
• Assess progress against the plan, and adapt the plan as appropriate.
• Use a work methodology appropriate to the task.
• Communicate effectively, being understood, including across different languages and cultures.
• Keep appropriate documentation for group meetings.
• Manage priorities.

Teaching methods

• Case studies
• Assignments and project-based learning
• Videos
• Articles and research papers
• Guest speakers

The course is based on the implementation of theoretical concepts and models to practical cases. Students work in a group on multiple cases during the whole semester.

Expected student activities

• Individual: Self-study, active engagement and class discussions, case evaluations, Q&A
• In-group: Teamwork (respect, brainstorming, engagement and giving effective feedback)

Assessment methods

Continuous evaluation of case reports, projects, individual and group presentations, class discussions, during the semester. More precisely:

• 25% presence, participation, and class engagement,
• 45% class assignments, presentations, projects, and case reports,
• 30% final exam (final report and presentation and understanding of the case)

Supervision

Resources

Bibliography

Series of book chapters, hand-outs, and notes will be shared in the class. The following books are recommended:

1. Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013
2. Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence, Random House, 2007
3. Chade-Meng Tan, Search inside Yourself, 2014
4. George Kohlrieser, Hostage at the Table, John Wiley & Sons Inc, 2006
5. Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, Sheila Heen, Difficult Conversations, Penguin, 2011
6. Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline, Doubleday, 2006
7. John Sterman, Business Dynamics: Systems thinking and modeling for a complex world, McGraw Hill, 2000
8. John Kotter, Leading Change, Harvard Business Review Press, 2012
9. Nigel Slack, Alistair Brandon-Jones, Operations Management, 2018
10. Sunil Gupta, Driving Digital Strategy, Harvard Business Review Press, 2018
11. David Rogers, The Digital Transformation Playbook, Columbia Business School Publishing, 2016

Ressources en bibliothèque

• Hostage at the table / Kohlrieser
• The Toyota Way to Continuous Improvement / Liker
• The Fifth Discipline / Senge
• Leading Change / Kotter
• The Digital Transformation Playbook / Rodgers
• Operations Management / Slack
• Emotional Intelligence / Goleman
• Business Dynamics: Systems thinking and modeling for a complex world / Sterman
• Difficult Conversations / Stone
• Driving Digital strategy / Gupta

Notes/Handbook

• Course slides (main material)
• Videos
• Hand-outs