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Course information

Learning outcomes

The operations function of an organization is responsible for delivering products to match supply with demand. This course provides students with core analytical concepts and tools to improve an organization's operational decision-making.

After the course, students will understand common issues faced by operations and supply chain managers, be able to apply analytical tools to address these problems to obtain insights, and understand the role and limits of analytics in improving operational decision-making.

Content

The course will include an overview of analytics for business operations and supply chains; data-driven decision-making for capacity and inventory management; optimization in logistics; and supply chain design, with applications from e.g., retail and manufacturing.

Teacher

Heikki Peura

Study material

Lecture slides, scientific articles, book chapters, assignments, computer implementations of mathematical/statistical models.

Workload

Lectures, independent and group work, and exam.

Prerequisites

This course will build on the basics of operations management, statistics, and optimization. In particular, it is strongly recommended that students have completed the following courses: 

- ISM-A3002 Tuotannon ja palveluiden johtaminen (Operations and service management), 

- ISM-C1002 Tilastotieteen ja data-analytiikan jatkokurssi (Advanced course in statistics and data analytics), 

- ISM-C1004 Business Analytics 1, 

or obtained equivalent skills from other university-level courses. These skills include the basics of linear algebra, multivariate functions, probability and random variables, regression models, and linear optimization. Experience with a programming language such as R or Python will be useful.

Evaluation

Assignments and exam.

Teaching time and location

The teaching time and the location of the course can be found at 

1. The link leads to Completion methods tab of the course page
2. From the top of the page (Version drop-down menu), check that academic year 2025-2026 is selected  

3. From the blue bar, click Lecture and open the Groups and teaching times tab to see the teaching time and the location of the course. Exam times can be seen by clicking Exam.
    

   Exam instructions at the Open University

The teacher has four (4) weeks to grade the exam submissions starting from the exam date.

Online learning environment for the course  

MyCourses online learning environment is a tool for both students and teachers for communication and managing everyday course work. You need an Aalto User ID to log in to the course's MyCourses workspace and participate in teaching.

Digital workspace of the course:

More details on completing the course will be available at MyCourses closer to the start of the course.

Registration and course fee

Registration for Open University courses is done via the link below: 

Registration for this course starts on 22.9.2025 at 9.00  
Registration for this course ends on 13.10.2025 at 23.59

It is not possible to register before the registration period has started or after it has ended.

The number of participants is limited to 6.

This course is organized by the Aalto University School of Business.

The course fee is paid upon registration for each course at a time and it is binding. Familiarize yourself with registration and payment rules as well as other guidelines for students:
Registration, payments and rules

Activating Aalto ID and Multifactor Authentication

You can activate your Aalto User ID the day after the registration and you should activate it no later than the day before the start of the course.
Instructions for activating your Aalto user ID

Once you have activated your Aalto user ID, also enable multifactor authentication. Some of Aalto University's services require multifactor authentication.

Instructions for using Multifactor Authentication