Operations Management in the Automotive Industry

Course content

After taking this course, the students will be able to

• describe and explain the tasks related to operations management in the automotive industry,
• develop mathematical models to tackle problems arising in strategical, tactical, and operational planning situations, and
• critically evaluate the potential and limitations of quantitative planning approaches against state-of-the-art research.

The course explores the most important tasks related to operations management in the automotive industry and discusses how quantitative planning approaches provide computer-based decision support. The respective mathematical models are jointly developed based on verbal problem descriptions. By adopting and extending the mathematical models, students improve their skills in the application of methods from Operations Research.

Topics (excerpt):

Network planning:

• Where should new plants be located? -
• Which car models should be allocated in which plant?
• How much flexibility should the production network offer?

Assembly Line Balancing:

• How many workers are required in the assembly lines?
• Which operation should be conducted at which station?

Logistics:

• What planning tasks have to be solved in designing the internal transportation, handling, and storage processes?
• How can optimization models and heuristic procedures support corporate planning in these domains?