Course Overview
The IU-UNC LogMBA curriculum is subject to change each year based off the changing needs of the business environment and defense arena.
First Year
Residency I: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Kenan-Flagler Business School
Program Orientation - Students are introduced to the two-year IU-UNC LogMBA Program and the upcoming online and in-residency curriculum. Students experience hands-on demonstrations of the online tools used in the program.
Supply Chain Overview - These courses provide an intensive overview of supply chain management including sourcing, manufacturing, and distribution along with technologies and quantitative models used in managing supply chains. The supply chain introduction prepares students to begin thinking and preparing for their Applied Systems Design Project that occurs in the fall of their first year.
Accounting - This session is a review of the basic principles of accounting to prepare students for their first quarter.
Written and Verbal Communications - These sessions are dedicated to explaining the importance of fundamental business and academic writing in conjunction with a complimentary set of business presentations skills. Written and verbal skills are reinforced during each in-residency.
Winter Quarter Online Courses
Managing Accounting Information for Decision-Making - This course provides a user-oriented understanding of how accounting information should be managed to ensure its availability on a timely and relevant basis for decision making. The first course segment reviews financial accounting and reporting while the second segment focuses on cost-benefit analysis for evaluating the potential value-added results from planning, organizing, and controlling a firm’s accounting information.
Operations Management - This course provides an overview of the management of operations in manufacturing and service firms and includes diverse activities such as determining the size and type of production process, purchasing the appropriate raw materials, planning and scheduling the flow of materials, the management of inventories, assuring product quality, and deciding on the production hardware and how it gets used. Managing operations effectively requires both strategic and tactical skills. The topics addressed include process analysis, workforce issues, materials management, quality and productivity, technology, strategic planning, and relevant analytical techniques.
Spring Quarter Online Courses
Quantitative Analysis - In this course, students will enhance their statistical and mathematical modeling skills covering the following topics: probabilistic decision making, regression analysis, forecasting, software simulation, optimization modeling with the EXCEL Solver, making decisions when multiple objectives are involved, and using neutral networks to improve forecasting.
Economics for Managers - This course explores economic decision making, the strategic interaction of business firms in industries, the purchasing and behavior of individual consumers and consumers as a group, and the influence of public policy on market outcomes. Students will develop fluency with the language of economics and a strong “economic intuition,” understanding of selected economics-based decision-making tools and the impact and interaction of the structure of an industry on competition, analysis of intra-industry rivalry, and improved understanding of public policy issues. A strong emphasis is placed on the logical foundations of economic analysis and managerial decision making and promotes the understanding and application of various quantitative measures.
Summer Quarter Online Courses
Supply Chain Management: Project Management - A project is a task with a beginning, a defined scope, and an end: installing a computer network, introducing a new product, and reengineering accounts payable are some examples. Today “the project manager is the linchpin in the current horizontal/vertical organizations. This course focuses on effective project planning and management. This course makes extensive use of case analysis. Students will also be exposed to state-of-the-art project management software (Project Primavera).
Supply Chain Management: Business Process Design - Viewing a business operation as a process has become an important concept. Applying this concept has resulted in significant improvements in cost, productivity and quality. This course will address both manufacturing and administrative/service processes. Initially, the traditional or classical methods of process analysis will be described. Current methods such as work-group analysis and cross-functional analysis will be addressed as well as assessment and evaluation of processes. Techniques such as the rating method, performance evaluation, benchmarking, and the quality profile are described. Students will use state-of-the-art software designed specifically to support process engineering applications.
Financial Management - This course provides a working knowledge of the tools and analytical conventions used in the practice of corporate finance. The focus is on understanding the basic elements of financial theory for use in analytical reasoning with business problems. Additionally, it explores the interrelationship among corporate policies and decisions. The instructional strategies include the use of PC spreadsheets to develop a planning model for funds requirement.
Residency II: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Kenan-Flagler Business School
International Study Residency outside the Continental U.S. & Capstone Project Preparation - The students will have just finished their first year of studies. This residency takes place during the Fall term of their first year. The destination alternates between Europe and Asia each year. During the study tour, the students visit military sites, government offices, and commercial manufacturing facilities in each country. The objective of the trip is for the students to be able to compare and contrast the three sectors in each country and be able to relate their observations to what they have learned in class and to American based operations. Each student reports his/her progress on their Applied Systems Design Project, presents a talk on a preselected topic related to the trip, gives an impromptu analysis of a randomly selected day’s events, and facilitates a class discussion of those events. The objective of this exercise is for the students to practice their presentation skills as well as offer educational content to the class.
Fall Quarter Course
Applied Systems Design Project Course - This course integrates with the overall MBA Program and enables the student to develop a meaningful operational process improvement for your organization. The project focuses on an important logistics support issue with the objective of reengineering a management process design to increase organizational effectiveness for the future. The project spans over three quarters of the program, however this quarter is set aside to focus on the data gathering, analysis, and final written submission. Students work with an assigned faculty advisor in the development and completion of their project.
Second Year
Winter Quarter Online Courses
Supply Chain System: Distribution & Inventory Management - Supply-Chain management is a set of approaches utilized to efficiently integrate suppliers, manufacturers, warehouses, and stores, so that merchandise is produced and distributed in the right quantities, to the right locations, and at the right time, in order to minimize system wide costs while satisfying service level requirements. This course will focus in two major areas related to supply-chain management: the design of the distribution system, and the planning and control system used to manage the supply chain material flow.
Business Law - The objective of this course is to provide the student of management with a basic knowledge of the American legal system, the legal process and relevant substantive law which is necessary to making informed and effective business decisions. The law develops and evolves in response to changing social, economic, political, and technological forces, and business decisions often carry long-lasting as well as delayed effects. This course emphasizes the study of the law of torts, contracts, and product liability. This course will give prospective managers insight into the dynamics of the legal process to enable them to predict as soundly as possible the future legal environment in which their present decisions will bear fruit.
Residency III: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Kenan-Flagler Business School
Applied Systems Design Project Presentation - Each student presents his/her final project analysis and results to the class, a board of advisors, and an IDB Executive Fellow. Students are expected to defend their analysis through a series of questions.
Logistics and Supply Chain Management - During this residency, the students are usually taken to an off-site manufacturing/logistics related facility for a tour/demonstration for one day.
Organizational Development and Change - This course instructs on how to plan, organize, motivate and control change through managing organizations using transactional leadership.
Spring Quarter Online Courses
Sustainable Operations - This course examines sustainability from an operations perspective, and has 3 modules. In the first module, we examine improvements on the environmental impact of current operations (eco-efficiency): environmental and take-back legislation, pollution prevention and waste reduction (including lean), 3R (reduce, reuse and recycle), environmental management systems (ISO 14000), and life cycle assessment. In the second module, we examine sustainable operations strategies, particularly sustainability in the supply chain, and environmental product differentiation. Finally, the third module addresses closed-loop systems (product stewardship), which is the ultimate goal of a sustainable operation: design for environment (DFE), leasing and servitization, reuse and remanufacturing.
Strategic Marketing Management - This course introduces the management process of creating a market-driven organization. Specific topics include marketing strategy, market research and analysis, and the development of products and services, pricing, distribution and promotion. Instructional strategies include lecture, classroom discussion through threaded discussion forums, case analysis and field research projects.
Residency IV: Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business
The students experience a range of topics during this residency, two of which are highly interactive. The first of these is a live case study with runs throughout the week. The students learn how to effectively apply the MBA skill sets they have gained over the course of the MBA program. The second is through team building exercises. Students will have a chance to meet professors and other students of the program in person. Other classes during the week may include Presentations & PowerPoint Storyboarding, Utilizing Library Resources and Financial Analysis, Risk & Risk Mitigation.
Summer Quarter Online Courses
Experimental Capstone Project Course - This capstone course is specifically tailored for the IU-UNC LogMBA Program to address organizational issues in the defense spectrum. Business development and venturing is the vehicle for this course. Employing the tools learned and practiced throughout their program, students will work in small teams to develop business plans for new businesses, or entrepreneurial activities within larger organizations, such as U.S. Army depots and arsenals. Readings and other course materials will be assigned by the faculty instructor.
Developing Strategic Capabilities - This course offers an introduction to tools for strategic management. It provides an introductory review of the complexities involved in determining long-term strategies. Rather than assessing the organization’s environment in terms of broadly defined opportunities and threats, this course examines the dynamics of the competitive environment and how the pace and direction of industry change are influenced by the resources, capabilities, and competitive interaction of rivals. The course uses discussion forums, team projects, and an interactive simulation.
Fall Quarter Online Courses
Global Business - This course takes a macroeconomist’s lens to the United States’ economy in a global context. After taking this course, you will be better able to understand the U.S. and other industrial countries’ economic performances, including the terminology and theories that are used to document and explain their long-term trends and cyclical ups and downs. That is, you should be able to better understand and evaluate articles you read in business periodicals like the “Wall Street Journal,” “Business Week,” “The Economist” and the “Financial Times.”
Business Planning and Project Management - This course introduces students to strategic management and planning. Students will develop and execute a business strategy in a business simulation. In addition, many of the skills and competencies developed in this course by the students will be progressively refined in subsequent courses. As a result, this course should be viewed as an introduction to many strategic and tactical business issues and perspectives addressed in the IU-UNC LogMBA program.