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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Introduction to Operations Management by University of Pennsylvania

4.4
stars
2,720 ratings

About the Course

This comprehensive course delves into operations management and process improvement principles and techniques, providing you with the knowledge and skills necessary to identify and eliminate inefficiencies in your organization. You will gain a solid foundation in operations management by analyzing key concepts such as cost-quality trade-offs, the efficiency frontier, and system inhibitors. Get ready to delve into process analysis, where you'll identify and analyze steps in a process, implementing changes for enhanced outcomes. With practical exercises, including creating process flow diagrams and capacity calculations, you'll strengthen your analytical skills firsthand. Experience the power of optimizing flow within operations as you uncover waste sources and design efficient processes for maximum output, reduced costs, and heightened customer satisfaction. An in-depth exploration of Little's Law will equip you to make informed decisions on capacity planning and process improvements, optimizing inventory levels, reducing lead times, and enhancing supply chain coordination. Additionally, you'll learn to effectively manage variability, laying the groundwork for consistent and exceptional quality standards. Statistical analysis, problem-solving methodologies, and real-time information utilization will empower you to tackle issues, find root causes, and foster continuous improvement. Throughout the course, the focus remains on driving improvements and achieving excellence. Analyze, improve, and reimagine how work gets done, armed with the necessary tools and frameworks to enhance work processes across diverse industries. Join this course to analyze, improve, and reimagine how work gets done and to acquire the necessary tools and knowledge to make meaningful improvements in your organization's operations....

Top reviews

KR

Aug 24, 2020

Great Instruction by Prof Christian - very lucid and with real world examples. Learning a business skill is mostly learning observation.. Now I know what to observe when looking for productivity!

RE

Jan 28, 2021

I found this course to be very informational; the practice and homework were excellent to prepare for the exams, and the instructor covered all material in the lectures that was on the exams.

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576 - 600 of 621 Reviews for Introduction to Operations Management

By Pedro R

Aug 24, 2020

The course content was good, however, the teacher has a lot of room for improvement to say the least. He seems to be an expert on the field but he was bad in transmitting knowledge. His language was confusing and not clear in both verbal and written explanations (terrible handwriting). I have no problem with the fact that he is not a native English speaker, but he could try to open his mouth a little bit more when talking so it is not so hard to understand him. Also, he throws a lot of statistical concepts into excel formulas without explaining where do they come from when doing the exercises which makes it very difficult to understand without having a background knowledge forcing the student to look for external resources and do a lot of investigation outside COURSERA. Finally, the exams were the worst part. They were poorly designed with unclear wording that can be misleading and cause the student to fail just to try it again assuming different meanings of the message. Also, the answers had to be manually inputted instead of multiple selection, which increases the possibility of format errors.

By Alex G B

Jun 26, 2020

Incredibly difficult for an intro class, especially as the Prof makes a lot of assumptions in calculations that aren't clearly defined. The homework quizzes and exams involve problems and formulas that are a bit too complex for an intro course for the general public! A lot of careful interpretation of wording and multiple steps mean that this course is quite challenging and takes a lot of careful attention.

I'd give it 1 star, except that the more you take of the course, the more the concepts start to make sense and the formulas become the tiniest bit easier.

Far too complex and challenging to be necessary for the overall specialisation; I thought that being a qualitative oriented person (with a PhD from an elite, Top 20 university in Social Science) that Corporate Finance would have been the toughest course on the specialisation, but actually, I think this one is. (Corporate Finance is actually *incredibly* well taught, by the way, and I gave that course 5 stars!)

By Shelby

Aug 18, 2016

This course is designed much differently than the other Fundamental Courses. The content is clear in the lectures, however, the questions in the quizzes are not based on concepts learned in the lesson directly. The quiz and final exams are not multiple choice, but instead require you to enter you answer manually and it is graded. The two combined makes it difficult to know which answer the teacher is searching for and leads to a frustrating process while test taking.

By Sven B

Jul 5, 2020

What I would argue as the deficiency of this course is the lack of deeper insight into the topics. The lectures themselves were very “dry,” but what disappointed me the most was the professor’s lack of deeper meaning in explaining the things he does and his approach to problem-solving. He should explain his reasoning in more detail when he is solving problems (giving more mathematical explanations and arguments etc.)

By Christian J K

Oct 2, 2019

Great course content. However, the graded homework and final exams have several unclearly-written trick questions that ask for answers that are not covered anywhere in the lecture videos or handouts. It is my professional opinion, as an experienced course developer and assessor, that this subject's assessment tools and evidence guides need to moderated and validated to be reliable, fair, flexible and valid.

By Nicole S

Jun 17, 2022

The sound is too low even at the highest computer volume so it's difficult to hear. I haven't had this issue with any other classes so far. The professor does a lot of mental math during practice problems without explaining where the numbers come from making it difficult to follow. The homework and tests have scenarios and equations which were not discussed in the classes.

By 张旭

Aug 3, 2020

it could be better if the teacher wanna make it better. Through the course, I can sense that how a business owner making the organization operation more efficient and more productive, but without any feeling that a teacher is trying to deliver knowledge to us. It is not that bad, while comparing to other courses I have attended, 2 stars.

By Ani J T

Jul 7, 2024

Too many stories and elongated principles. This course can be shortened by removing unnecessarily long winded examples and given the ideas and formulas in more simple terms. I understand that the goal might have been to make the material engaging, but instead it was made to be confusing.

By Colleen M

Jun 16, 2020

The questions in the homework and quizzes are much harder than what is given in the videos. There are not enough opportunities for practice problems for students to be successful. The instructor is difficult to understand, making this much more frustrating than it needs to be.

By Aaron D M

Feb 3, 2023

Course is interesting and one of the best from this specialisation, but technically it is really bad, a lot of errors, and confusing questions in tests, where you don't need to solve problem, but need to invent what professor mean when created that question.

By Bhupendrasinh T

Jul 8, 2017

Exam questions are very very delusional and no proper support is given to understand them. Course material is very good and can be very helpful for anyone but the way they managed to write question is out of this world and complete waste of time.

By Siddharth S

Oct 30, 2023

The course content, faculty, and materials are all 5/5 star ratings, but the quiz is so frustrating and worst among all the courses I have done. The test here is to "Guess the right number format"!

By Nicholas S

Feb 2, 2021

Instructor understood the material and explained concepts well enough but the formulas and problem solving were painfully unclear. One of the tutors for this course is disrespectful to learners.

By Nuno F R F

Nov 16, 2017

Not very clear explanations of theory and of the problems. Many times wasnt clear which units to use. Very boring classes presented in a monotonic way and with no enthusiasm by the teacher.

By Chloe F

May 19, 2020

Explanations were difficult to understand at times.

It would be best if test answers were explained

Video audio quality could be better

By Andy Z

Jul 6, 2016

Does not explain quite so thoroughly. Some parts are hard to understand. And quizes are too hard. And 3 tries A WEEK?!?

By Michael J

Sep 12, 2022

the exams are very differult with alot of information to grasp

By Scott W

Dec 13, 2019

Poorly filmed course, difficult to understand and folllow

By Brianna C

Jun 28, 2020

this was very difficult

By Patricia C

Sep 18, 2024

Hard to follow

By Katherine G

Jul 15, 2023

I have never been so frustrated taking a course. The instructor is skips steps in his math leading to a lot of confusion. The discussion forum is no help and my questions weren't addressed, or were not addressed in a timely manner. I even bought his Operations Management textbook and still had trouble following this course. The fact that we can't see the answers after the exam is even more frustrating because I will never know how to complete the questions I missed. The frustrating part is that I found the contents of this course very interesting and would greatly benefit from having a better instructor so that I can implement some of these process improvements at work. I'll just look for another course on Coursera or LinkedIn Learning.

If this course was created years ago, I strongly recommend Coursera re-taping this course.

By Davide P

Sep 20, 2021

This course requires skills in other fields that are taken for granted by the instructor. If you lack any of those skills (since this is supposed to be an introduction course) it is going to be a struggle to pass the course. Explanations and definition are given casually and randomly, making everything much more difficult. Very bad course and instructor.

By Cosmos

Sep 22, 2021

Not happy at all with this course. First of all it is badly designed: the amount of explanations are disproportionately small and incomplete comparing to the amount of weekly courses; it is expensive and it takes longer than a month to absorb and solve all the quizes, which are 2 per week/8to 11 questions each; the sound of the recoring is very low.

By Hilal P

Oct 6, 2022

I truly regret that I took this course. The quiz and final questions are not well explained in the course videos and materials. I studied the materials over and over but eveytime I try to take the exam ı fail. I think you should not waste your time for this course .

By Kimeco J F

Oct 30, 2020

I hated this course, it had course information that didn't go with any of the videos'/readings that were presented! I had many thoughts of giving up, but pushed through!