The Supply Chain Management track is one of the tracks in the two-year Operations and Management Logistics master’s program. Both years are divided into semesters that run from September to January and from February to July; each semester is divided into quarters of eight weeks in which you take courses. Knowledge is tested throughout a quarter and/or in subsequent examination periods of two weeks. As with all TU/e programs, the necessary skills are imparted through a mix of interactive lectures, engaging assignments and group work covering topics related to state-of-the-art research by the university’s professors, all of which is delivered in English.
Structure overview
Visit the education guide to find more information about the general overview of this track. As a whole, the program is structured as follows:
Year 1
- Track core courses (35 ECTS)
- Specialization electives (10 ECTS)
- Free electives (15 ECTS)
Year 2
Q1 + Q2:
- Literature review (5 ECTS)
- International semester/internship and electives/electives (25 ECTS)
Q3 + Q4:
- Graduation project (30 ECTS)
In the first year, Supply Chain Management students take seven core courses, some of which allow for a choice between multiple options. These courses focus on research methods in operations management and logistics, artificial intelligence, work and organizational psychology for operations management, multi-echelon inventory management, retail operations, business process management business analysis, and the design of operations planning and control systems. Alongside these track core courses with a limited amount of flexibility, students can choose 10 ECTS (usually two courses) from a list of courses that are closely related to Supply Chain Management and 15 ECTS (usually three courses) of free electives. This elective space allows students to deepen and/or broaden their knowledge even further by offering full freedom to design their program according to their interests and ambitions.
The second year consists of 25 ECTS of additional free electives, which can be used by the student to go abroad for an international semester. The final 35 ECTS are used for a literature review and the graduation project. Students who do not choose an international semester may opt for an academic or industrial internship as part of the free electives.
Relevant courses
Visit the education guide to find more information about the curriculum of this track. Examples of relevant courses for Supply Chain Management include:
- 1CM100 Multi-Echelon Inventory Management. This course covers the broad range from inventory policies for basic supply chains to the complex inventory optimization of general supply chains. Students will be able to use well-known heuristics for inventory optimization and will know the various managerial insights related to inventory control of supply chains.
- 1CM40 Retail Operations. This course aims to get students acquainted with the (Dutch and international) retail sector. It covers recent advances in inventory control, distribution, store operations, assortment planning and more, as well as their interactions with retail marketing. Throughout the course, quantitative and empirical modeling skills are used and managerial insights for the retail sector are highlighted.
- 1BM05 Business Process Management. The focus of this course is on the integrated management of business processes to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of those processes. The course teaches students the methods, techniques and tools to perform each phase of the business process management lifecycle, including identification, discovery, diagnosis, design, execution and control.
- 1BM20 Business Analysis for Information Technology Systems. This course involves defining needs and designing/describing IT solutions for business problems, ranging from novel commercial software products to large-scale business/enterprise information systems. In addition to learning methods for analyzing IT systems, students will work in groups to develop and verify the requirements of an IT system or a specific part of it.
- 1CM140 Design of Operations Planning and Control Systems. This course trains students to develop control structures for the control of complex production and inventory systems, taking into account the technological, economical and organizational constraints that a design has to satisfy. Students learn to evaluate the designs and select one that best satisfies the design requirements in terms of performance and costs.
You can also complement the Supply Chain Management track with courses from other tracks or electives to boost your field of expertise and increase your employability. The program provides ample opportunity to select courses that are closely related to the focus of the track, courses aimed at broadening general knowledge, and courses with a more methodological focus. For example, all students have the opportunity to deepen their methodological knowledge on artificial intelligence/data science by selecting a package of AI courses alongside the compulsory course on artificial intelligence.
Graduation project
Master’s degrees at TU/e conclude with a graduation project, often conducted within an organization in the relevant domain. Given that Brainport boasts over 5000 high-tech and IT companies, the region provides a wide array of options for students to find a place that suits them. Together with their company supervisor and academic supervisors, students formulate a practical, scientific and relevant research question. This results in a master’s thesis based around three elements:
- Literature survey (5 ECTS)
- Project proposal (no separate ECTS; part of 3)
- Graduation project (30 ECTS)
The literature survey is evaluated on a ten-point scale. The project proposal is conducted as the first part of a thesis and is evaluated on a go/no-go basis. Ideas for projects could include:
- Designing and evaluating a model to determine the best safety stock levels and positioning in an omni-channel, multi-echelon supply chain in order to maintain service levels while minimizing holding costs.
- Designing a decision-support tool that provides the end-user with the ability to create and assess different scenarios in terms of availability of materials, resources and labor.
- Developing a predictive model that leverages deep neural network architectures to predict the delivery time of a set of suppliers. The model could be coupled with a prescriptive model to prioritize the suppliers to be called when delays are predicted.
- Designing an artifact that leverages cluster analysis to discover products groups in demand data and stochastic programming to optimize warehouse operations under demand uncertainty.
These are just examples; students also have a high degree of freedom to choose a topic that appeals to them and matches their career vision.
Studying abroad
In an increasingly interconnected world, the opportunity to spend part of your program elsewhere can provide valuable experience for an international career in (technological) innovation, including supply chain management. A master’s degree in the Supply Chain Management track of Operations Management and Logistics therefore offers the option to go abroad in the first two quartiles of the second year of the program.