All class policies subject to change at instructor's discretion.

Quick Overview:

• Time:
  • Section 04: Tuesday and Friday, 9:50-11:10 AM
  • Section 05: Tuesday and Friday, 11:30 AM-12:50 PM
• Place:
  • Usually Beck 213. 
  • On January 21 and March 25 only, class will meet in the Levin 005 computer lab instead of in Beck
• Instructor: Jonathan Eckstein
• E-mail: jeckstei@rutcor.rutgers.edu
• Class website: http://business.rutgers.edu/eckstein/om-spring-2005.html
• Office: 255 J. H. Levin Building, Livingston Campus
• Telephone: (732) 445-0510; also (732) 445-3272 for urgent calls.
• Office hours: To be announced, but probably Monday and Thursday afternoons.
• Text: There is only one text, a course pack called "Operations Management" from University Publishing Solutions.  The Spring 2005 edition is recommended, and the Spring 2004 edition also allowed, but not highly recommended.  Do not try to use editions older than Spring 2004.  See below for details on trying to use the Spring 2004 edition.
• Software: Excel, and the Solver and YASAI add-ins.   
• First meeting: Tuesday, January 18, 2004.  Note that I will be in Canada that day, and the class will be taught by Adi Ben-Israel.  I plan to teach all subsequent class meetings myself.
• Common final exam:  Monday, May 9, 12-3 PM; room(s) to be announced.
• Other Sections: All other sections will use the same textbook, follow the same basic curriculum, and take the same final exam.  Some may also have identical homework assignments.

Course Content

This "mindset" is called Management Science (MS) or Operations Research (OR). Basically, the MS/OR approach involves forming (imperfect) mathematical models of business situations, analyzing these models, and then deciding on some "optimal" course of action.  A key concept in this approach is to separate the analysis of a decision problem into two steps, first mathematical modeling, and then solution of the resulting abstract model.  In this class, we will leave solution of the model up to existing computer software.

There are two key ideas in applying MS/OR: the first is modeling decision making and planning as a mathematical optimization problem with variables, and objective function, and constraints.  The second is to model uncertainty using the tools of probability theory.  We will spend the first 15 regular classes exploring the first idea, and the last 10 regular classes exploring the second.  We will cover a relatively small set of subtopics in each case, but try to explore them in depth so you get a better feeling for the modeling process.  Note that optimization and stochastic models can be combined much more closely than we attempt in this course, but that is a more advanced topic (called stochastic programming)  

MS/OR is most helpful in situations where quantitative information is plentiful and there are relatively few intangible or psychological considerations, making it easier to produce accurate mathematical models. It is also particularly beneficial when the decision or planning situation is complex, making it hard for managers to simply "eyeball" the decision or "fly by the seat of their pants." Such situations arise most often at the operational level of the management hierarchy, and progressively less often at the higher levels (tactical and strategic). Hence the application to operations management. "Operations management" courses at some other schools may deal more with qualitative generalities of managing business operations; this course basically focuses on the quantitative tools needed for such management.

General Information

• Attendance:  I do not take formal attendance, and attendance has no direct affect on your grade.  My view is that you are supposed to be adults, and if you can learn that material without my help, I will not be personally offended.  However, I do informally monitor attendance, and most students find regular attendance essential to performing well in the class.  Also, if you don't come to class, please don't come to office hours with questions about the material I discussed there.  In severe weather, please check the class website -- if at all possible, I will post any class cancellation or schedule change information there as soon as I can.  You can also monitor the Rutgers main website, WCTC AM 1450, or Rutgers INFO AM 530 for possible university closing information.
• E-Mail List:  I may occasionally use Rutgers' RAMS mail system to post important information such as class cancellations or homework problem corrections and hints.  Please check your e-mail regularly for class announcements -- it will be your responsibility if you miss one of these announcements.  RAMS uses whatever e-mail Rutgers has on file for you, which is usually your "eden" e-mail account.  If you prefer to receive e-mail at another address, you must do one of the following two things.  
  • Configure your eden account to forward mail by following the instructions in http://faq.rutgers.edu/content/oleksiak/html/Mail.Forward.Eden.JimiO.html.
  • Update the address Rutgers officially has on file by modifying your student record online via https://www.acs.rutgers.edu:8892/studentdir. 
• Questions: Unless you have skipped class, questions are strongly encouraged during class, during office hours, and via e-mail.
• Exams: There will be two in-class midterm exams and a final. All exams will be closed book. For the midterms, you can bring a one-page "cram sheet" in your own handwriting (both sides of the paper are allowed). A two-page cram sheet (also in your own handwriting, both sides of the paper allowed) is permitted for the final. All sections of this course will have a common final exam. The final distribution of letter grades should depend on the section's final exam performance, as compared to other sections. The final will be "cumulative", covering all topics in the course.
• Homework: I am planning on 11 homework assignments. Typically, homework assignments will be handed out on Friday, and due in class the following Friday.  There is zero credit for late homework (although I may make exceptions in documented cases of genuine medical or family emergency). I will drop your lowest two assignment scores in computing your overall homework performance, with late or missing assignments counting as a score of zero.  This policy effectively allows you to skip one or two homework assignments without penalty.  However, I would definitely recommend against skipping a homework early in the term, or planning in advance to skip more than one homework.  Most homework problems will involve computer work.
• Collaboration and Cheating: You are allowed to seek or give help to other students on homework assignments. However, although there is no formal penalty for copying homework, I have found it critical for the learning process that you work through the problems yourself (especially on the computer) and hand in your own work.  Otherwise, you will probably "crash and burn" on the exams. No collaboration of any kind is permitted on exams. 
• Computer Lab:  All software needed for this course is installed in the computer lab in the Levin building basement.
• Using non-lab computers:  You may use the Levin computer lab, other university clusters, or your own computers.  If the Solver does not appear on the "Tools" menu in Excel, you may have to go to "Add-ins..." and check the box marked "Solver".  If Solver is not installed on your computer, you can install it from the Microsoft Office CD-ROM (you are out of luck if you have a "pirate" version of Office with no installation CD-ROM).  On computers outside the lab, you will probably have to download the YASAI add-in from its website.
• Textbooks:  There is only one text, a course pack called "Operations Management" from University Publishing Solutions.  Your options for obtaining this text are:
  • Buy a new Spring 2005 edition from the Livingston bookstore.
  • Obtain a used Spring 2004 edition, but be aware:
    • You will have to adjust to the differences between the two editions quietly and for yourself; I don't want to waste a lot of class time worrying about two different course packs.
    • The material on pages 63-68 of the Spring 2005 course pack is not in the older editions.  If I assign problems from those pages, you will have to borrow somebody else's course pack to do the assignment (I can't put that material on the web for copyright reasons).
    • The material on pages 98-102 has been changed.  If you use are trying to use the old course pack, print and substitute the following pages
      • Page 98 (replaces page 97 of old course pack)
      • Pages 99-100 (replace page 98-99 of the old course pack; print both the "values" and "formulas" sheets of this Excel file)
      • Pages 101-102 (replace pages 100-101 of the old course pack; print both the "values" and "formulas" sheets of this Excel file)
• Bringing Books to Class:  Bring the course pack to all classes, except exams.
• Grading: No letter grades are assigned to individual assignments or exams, only numeric scores from 0 to 100. Your course grade will be based on your aggregate score, combining your scores on all written class work with following weights:
  • 20% First midterm
  • 20% Second midterm
  • 40% Final
  • 20% Homework (excluding your two worst scores)
  • If your final is higher than your lower midterm, then the final counts 50%, and the lower midterm only 10%

  I then rank students according to these aggregate scores, and assign grades by class rank, with some subjective judgement applied to borderline cases. Thus, the grades for all your class work are jointly "curved" once at the end of the course.  Homework scores in this class have historically tended, with a few exceptions, to be in the 90's and vary much less than exam scores. In the past, getting an above-average grade (A or B+) in the class requires doing 9 of the 11 homework assignments and getting a suitably above-average grade on at least two of the three exams. I reserve the right to make changes to the grade calculation scheme.   For further information, see my "how I grade" page.

• The homework assignments are a significant amount of work, and I often get complaints that they count for so little a percentage of the grade.  Regrettably, I have run into problems in the past when I have placed more emphasis on homework in the grading scheme.   These problems occur because I allow collaboration on homework, it is very hard to police exactly how people "collaborate", and the homework grades tend to vary relatively little (average homework scores are well into the 90's most semesters).  Thus I place just enough weight on homework to induce students to actually complete the assignments.  Think of the homework as a critical part of the learning process:  I evaluate that learning process mainly by exams, but you learn mainly through the homework (provided you don't abuse your freedom to collaborate).  Do not count on high homework scores to boost your overall grade.  You can certainly damage your course letter grade by poor or missing homework assignments, but historically, with almost all homework grades being in the 90's, you cannot typically lift your class rank very much through homework.

Projected Syllabus

Detailed schedule, subject to change: