Manufacturing System and Supply Chain Design
This MIT Sloan graduate course examines decision making for designing manufacturing systems and supply chains. It covers frameworks and models for structuring key trade-offs, including logistics network design, capacity planning and flexibility, make-versus-buy decisions, and integration with product development. Lectures address how the internet and e-commerce have introduced new opportunities and challenges for these systems. Industry cases illustrate the concepts, giving students exposure to real applications rather than abstract theory alone. The course is aimed at students concentrating in Operations Management and runs as a second half-term subject. Materials are provided through MIT OpenCourseWare under a Creative Commons license, including course readings and assignments, with no certificate offered. It builds on foundational operations knowledge and pushes into applied system design problems facing modern manufacturers and logistics networks.