Operations and Information Management Department

The mission of the Operations and Information Management Department is to improve the quality and productivity of enterprises by (1) educating highly capable professionals and (2) discovering, developing, and validating new principles, theory, and methods. Members of the department are brought together by common interests in process management, decision making, and information.

The department offers a major in Operations and Information Management to MBA students that have taken 5 CUs of OPIM courses (including core courses, click link for more details and suggested course offerings):

Areas of Graduate Study

Operations and Information Management

Requirements for the OPIM Major

a) 5 cu's from any courses offered by the OPIM department, including core courses.
b) OPIM courses cross-listed with other departments do count towards the major.
c) Waivers of OPIM courses do not count towards the major.

Following are suggested tracks, which constitute coherent sets of courses in specific areas of study. However, these tracks are only suggestions and students are free to construct their own programs of study.

Operations Management Track

OPIM 650 Operations Performance Analysis
OPIM 651 Problem Solving, Design, and System Improvement (.5 cu)
OPIM 654 Product Design and Development
OPIM 655 Integrating Marketing and Operations (.5 cu)
OPIM 656 Operations Strategy and Process Management
OPIM 658 Service Operations Management
OPIM 697X Retail Supply Chain Management (.5 cu)

Information Systems Track

OPIM 660 Information Systems Engineering
OPIM 661 Systems Analysis, Design, and Implementation
OPIM 664 Database and Information Management Systems
OPIM 672 Decision Support Systems

Decision Processes Track

OPIM 672 Decision Support Systems
OPIM 690 Managerial Decision Making
OPIM 691 Negotiations
INSR 811 Risk and Crisis Management (.5 cu) (may be counted as an OPIM
course for the purposes of satisfying the 5 cu requirement for the Decision
Processes Track)

Cross-Functional Major in Marketing and Operations Management

Marketing and Operations Management are two closely interrelated key functional areas of all manufacturing and service firms. This cross-functional major is designed to satisfy the strong need in industry for MBAs with in-depth training in both of the areas. Graduates in this area are better prepared to take challenges in their future career paths. Examples of their first job assignment include brand managers who have to coordinate marketing and manufacturing for a particular product, project managers of consulting firms, participation in new product development teams, members of quality management programs, or managers in the service sector with responsibility for creating and marketing new services.

Requirements for the Marketing and Operations Management Major*

(Total of 7.5 cu's)

MKTG 621/622 Marketing core courses (1 cu)
OPIM 631/632 OPIM core courses (1 cu)
MKTG 756 Marketing Research, (1 cu)
MKTG/OPIM 655 Integrating Marketing and Operations (.5 cu)**
plus 4 cu's, with at least 1 cu from the Marketing Department and 2 cu's from the OPIM Department.

* Marketing elective coursework may not be taken on a pass/fail basis. One credit unit of OPIM elective coursework may be taken on a pass/fail basis each semester.
** If MKTG/OPIM655 is not offered, it must be replaced with 0.5cu of marketing or operations elective coursework.

Major in Information, Strategy, and Economics

The field of strategy is constantly evolving as the competitive environment facing firms changes, and as our knowledge of the field evolves to keep pace. One of the most significant changes has been the dramatic improvement in the information endowments, or “states of informedness,” enjoyed by the firm, its customers, and its competitors. The discipline of Information Strategy and Economics has emerged to deal with changes in information endowments and their impact on strategy, and it provides an excellent foundation for careers in strategic management, both within the firm and as consultants in strategic management. Its courses are motivated by its focus on information as a driver of strategy, hence its location in the OPIM Department, but it does not study technology nor does it have quantitative analysis focus of the rest of the OPIM Department.

ISE is a major in its own right, but most of its courses also can be applied toward the major in Strategy in the Management department.

The availability of information at an acceptable cost - anywhere, anytime, at any speed, and for almost any purpose - has profoundly affected all aspects of management by improving the ability to perform detailed customer profitability analyses modern information technology changes the balance between strategies based on scale and strategies based on market micro-segmentation and differential pricing. This has affected marketing strategies in insurance, credit card operations, telecommunications, and numerous other service industries.

By improving performance monitoring capabilities throughout the firm, communications technologies alter the balance between centralization and decentralization and the optimal locus of control and decision rights; this has changed the design of firm's internal control structures as well as the tradeoffs among internal production, external procurement, and joint ventures. The entire industry of business process outsourcing is enabled by this change.

Advances in computing, information storage and retrieval, and communications have improved the quality of customer information throughout the channel and have affected the balance of power among retailers, distributors, and manufacturers or primary suppliers, altering the distribution of profits and the design of appropriate channel strategies. This is restructuring distribution for travel services, and is affecting industries as diverse as retail financial services and consumer packaged goods.

As power continues to shift among retailers, distributors, and manufacturers / primary suppliers, many industries are being forced to deal with restructuring caused by disintermediation resulting from electronic channels.

While these changes are directly driven by information technology, it is the management challenges, and not the underlying technology, that are addressed by this new inter-disciplinary major.

Course requirements for the major can be satisfied by selecting from courses already offered in OPIM, Management, and Marketing. The major is intended to allow great flexibility, as individual students may wish to focus on issues of information strategy applied to marketing, change management internal governance, or external alliances. Students are required to take at least one course from an approved list of Marketing courses and at least one course from an approved list of Management courses. Additionally, students must complete at least three credits within the OPIM Department.

Required Courses in Information Strategy (Both of the following courses)

OPIM 666 Information: Industry Structure and Competitive Strategy (.5 cu)
OPIM 669 Advanced Topics in Information Strategy [Intended as a second
semester second year capstone course to integrate the diverse subjects covered in the major](1 cu)


External Focus / Marketing (At least one course from the following list or other as
negotiated with ISE program coordinator based on individual student's needs and preferences.)

MKTG 756 Marketing Research
MKTG 776 Applied Probability Models in Marketing
MKTG 777 Marketing Strategy
MKTG 759 Channel Management (.5 cu)

Internal Focus / Management (At least one course from the following list or other as negotiated with ISE program coordinator based on individual student's needs and preferences.)

MGMT 711 Competitive Strategy and Industry Structure
MGMT 712 Managing Interfirm Alliances (.5 cu)
MGMT 773 Managing Organizational Change
MGMT 782 Strategic Implementation
MGMT 784 Managerial Economics and Game Theory

OPIM ISE Electives (At least two of the following, as needed so that approved courses taken for the Major total at least five credit units and the approved OPIM courses total at least three credit units)

OPIM 632 Operations Management: Supply Chain Management (.5 cu)
OPIM 658 Service Operations Management
OPIM 667 Business Transformation (.5 cu)
OPIM 668 Telecommunications Technology and Competitive Strategy (.5 cu)
OPIM 669 Special Topics In Information, Strategy, and Economics
OPIM 670 Special Topics in Information Systems: Simulation and Dynamic
Competitive Strategy
OPIM 676 Electronic Markets (.5 cu)
OPIM 677 Business Models and the Internet: Strategy, Operations, Information (.5 cu)
OPIM 691 Negotiations
OPIM 899 Independent Study in Information Strategy (Can be advised by faculty members in OPIM, Marketing, Management, or Finance, as appropriate to student needs.) (.5 cu or 1.0 cu)

Interdisciplinary Major

Environmental and Risk Management

The major in Environmental and Risk Management is concerned with public and private sector issues in designing and implementing effective strategies related to the impacts of business activities on the environment and related areas in health and safety. There has been a growing concern with such impacts because of their inherent importance for responsible management. This is due primarily to the increasing cost of laws and regulations governing those business activities which may pose risks to the environment, to the health and safety of workers, and/or to surrounding communities.

This major is designed to provide in-depth foundations for those interested in pursuing careers in the growing environmental sector of the economy, whether in private business, in environmental consulting, or in government. Non-majors interested in an overview of business and policy in the environmental area should also find selected courses from this major of interest.

The program provides an interdisciplinary approach, building on faculty and courses from departments such as Accounting, Health Care Management, Insurance and Risk Management, Legal Studies, Management, Marketing, Operations and Information Management, and Business and Public Policy and Management. Additional coursework on environmental and technological risks can be pursued in parallel with the Wharton program through studies in the School of Arts and Sciences and the School of Engineering and Applied Science.

Requirements for the Major

Five course units (cu’s) are required.

a) The following mini-courses are required:

OPIM 762 Environmental Sustainability and Value Creation (.5 cu)
INSR 811 Risk and Crisis Management (.5 cu)

b) In addition, four of the following courses are required:

HCMG 901 Cost Benefit and Cost Effectiveness Analysis
LGST 815 Environmental Law and Business
OPIM / BPUB 761 Risk Analysis and Environmental Management
BPUB 777 Cost-Benefit Analysis: Decision Making and Implementation…
OPIM 656 Operations Strategy and Process Management
ASP Advanced Study Project in the environmental and risk management area, as agreed with a faculty member in the program.

c) In addition to electives that students may take in Environmental Studies in the School of Arts and Sciences and the School of Engineering and Applied Science, students are encouraged to take one or more of the following courses depending on their specific interests and majors:

HCMG 844 The Economics of Health Care and Policy
MKTG 756 Marketing Research
OPIM 654 Product Design and Development

The Director of the Environmental Management Program coordinates the program. The program also offers a seminar series co-sponsored with the Institute for Environmental Studies and the Risk Management and Decision Processes Center. The on-going design and monitoring of the program is supported by an interdisciplinary group of faculty with teaching and research interests in environmental and risk management.

Dual MBA/MS Program

Requirements for the dual MBA/MS Program:

Students are admitted separately to the MBA and MS programs at Penn. Examples of the MS option include the standard MS degrees in SEAS (Bioengineering, Chemical Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical and Systems Engineering, Materials Science, Mechanical Engineering), the Telecommunications programs, and programs in Biotechnology (SEAS/SAS/Medicine) and Cognitive Science (SEAS/SAS/Medicine). These students would be required to fulfill all of the core requirements of the MBA programs plus a set of restricted electives listed above. In addition, they would be required to fulfill all of degree requirements for the MS, typically 10 cu’s.