SCM-MS Introduction     Businesses spend billions of dollars for procurement, transportation, manufacturing, distribution and finally meeting customers' product/service needs. These supply chain processes are extensive for taking place in chains/networks that span several companies and/or continents. A supply chain manager not only plans and executes logistics activities but also seeks and exploits synergies among these activities. Searching for synergies requires integrating activities via a holistic approach (a system-wide thinking). Supply chain management emphasizes this integration more than logistics. Integration, despite potentially revealing synergies, further complicates the supply chain manager's job.

The most challenging aspect of supply chain management is intelligently improving the extensive supply chain processes which are hard to totally capture -especially in real-time. The useful idea in this context is "Intelligent Decomposition for Integration (IDI)". IDI is simplifying the supply chain system by ignoring information/processes that are inconsequential to decision making. A supply chain manager uses knowledge, experience and common sense to decompose the supply chain system into smaller sub-systems such that synergies are still intact. Then each sub-system can be optimized to take advantage of the synergies. Finally, the optimal decisions of sub-systems are patched together to obtain a sound, implementable plan for the entire supply chain. Such plans form the basis of molding traditional business operations into competitive weapons in today's fierce global economy.

IDI recurs in supply chains while improving operations towards lower costs, faster delivery, higher quality, more sales and mass customization. To achieve this decomposition-integration dichotomy, SCM-MS students develop analytical skills, business intuition and acumen. The students will be exposed to ideas from business strategy, marketing, risk management, trade-off analysis and economy as well as tools from probability/statistics, optimization, game theory and information systems. In addition, they will have an opportunity to study negotiation, conflict resolution, leadership and project management. The program aims to develop well-rounded business leaders who can meet and overcome the challenges from planning to execution of supply chains.

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