Best Free MOOCs In Business In September

Supply Chain Design

School: MIT

Platform: edX

Registration Link: REGISTER HERE

Start Date: September 5, 2017

Workload: Not Specified.

Instructors: Dr. Chris Caplice, Yossi Sheffi, Jarrod Goentzel, James Blayney Rice, Jr.

Credentials: Dr. Caplice teaches logistics and supply management at MIT, ranked #1 (graduate) and #2 (undergraduate) in this field. He oversees the MIT Freight Lab, which researches ways to improve the design and management of freight transportation. He also manages the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics and MIT’s Global SCALE Network. Caplice, who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Texas, also serves as the chief scientist for Chainalytics, a supply chain consulting firm.

Sheffi previously headed MIT’s engineering systems division and has founded five different companies. Goentzel is the founder and director of MIT’s Humanitarian Response Lab, which is part of the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics. Rice is the deputy director of this center, along with teaching supply chain management and finance courses at the school.

Graded: After completing the course, students can receive an instructor-signed certificate for $150.

Description: It’s easy to take supply chains for granted. We just naturally expect a WalMart to stock shampoo or a KFC to have biscuits and honey. However, there is a complex process in getting supplies from point A to B. In fact, there are many points in between, such as supply source, manufacturing, storage, and distribution. At a micro level, each of these points is tied together in a process and regularly interacts with each other. The trick, of course, is to design a model that shaves time and cost off the process without making too many tradeoffs in terms of service quality and scale.

As part of this course, students will learn:

• How to design supply chain networks and flow
• How to translate supply chain actions into financial terms
• How to source and procure products and services
• How to plan, demand and run operations planning
• How to design a supply chain organization
• How to assess supply chain performance metrics

In addition, student will master the three flows (physical, financial, and information) inherent to supply chain operations.

Review: “This is an excellent course to go through for supply chain professionals. It addresses each of the supply chain processes and the design considerations that go into those processes. The course wraps up with the prevalent organizational structures and the metrics for measuring the performance. Many of the practitioners would be working in a particular area of the supply chain and this course helps develop a comprehensive overview of the whole chain and the interdependencies of his function with the other interfacing functions. Similarly for software professionals and consultants working in a particular area, it provides a complete overview and also helps in developing a good understanding of the logic (S&OP, optimization, MRP, ATP) that goes into the functioning of the software. With respect to the course content, I suggest inclusion of the following either within the existing topics or as additional topics- 1. Little’s law and the concepts of lean manufacturing 2. Theory of Constraints 3. Cellular manufacturing As the course is further developed, MIT can consider making the problems broad based with respect to the industry content. For example, blending problems of the process industries, model mix problems in the auto industry etc.” For additional reviews, click here.

© Copyright 2025 Poets & Quants. All rights reserved. This article may not be republished, rewritten or otherwise distributed without written permission. To reprint or license this article or any content from Poets & Quants, please submit your request HERE.