Module Review: DAO2703/DSC2006 (AY18/19 Semester 1)

DAO2703/DSC2006 Operations and Technology Management is a 4 MC module that deals with fundamental operations and supply chain concepts that will help in understanding level 3000 Ops Management modules. I took this module as an elective but since there is no X in this module, I have to compete with business students as well. So, I'm writing this review from en engineering student's perspective. This module is deceivingly easy and has a pretty steep bell curve.

Assessment
10% Tutorial Participation
15% Course Project (Your entire tutorial group is your group for this project, legit)
5% Tutorial Assignment
5% Group Assignment 
5% Peer Evaluation
60% Finals (2 hours, Closed Book, 1 A4 cheatsheet)

Lecturer: 
First half: A/Prof Mabel Chou Cheng-Feng  
Second half: Dr Qi Mei

Tutor: 
Mr Seah Seow Buay

Textbooks/Readings
Operations Management, by Cachon and Terwisech, McGraw Hill. Not a must to have the textbook in my opinion. The lecture notes are sufficient and any queries I had, I would ask the Profs or my tutor straight away.

Lectures
There is 1 lecture per week, 2 hours long. I took this module alone but I still dragged myself to every lecture every week haha. Lectures are webcasted. Lectures were kindaaa draggy in my opinion. Between the two Profs, Dr Qi Mei's lectures are more worth going for. Prof Mabel sometimes will talk quite a lot on business examples and may deviate away from the main topic. It is good as it helps us to be exposed to certain case studies but it is also not entirely good because it is not totally related to the module content. Dr Qi Mei focuses more on the module content itself. 

Tutorial
Tutorial was once per week and were 1 hour long. For the first 2 tutorials, we were supposed to discuss on the course project with the whole tutorial group. The 15% one. I was surprised at first since it's my first time that the entire tutorial group (about 32 students) is the project group. Obviously we had to break into different groups to write subsections of the report. The project was about a promising technology today that can improve or had already improved on today's operations management. We had to either write a report or present our ideas in a certain other way (obviously report writing is easier). My group did on beacon technology and my subgroup managed the portion on how beacon tech can help in cold chain management.

For the subsequent tutorials, we were broken into groups of 4 or 5. For every tutorial, there will be a set of questions to solve. Then, one group will present the tutorial solutions every week. The powerpoint/Excel presentations prepared every week by the group will also be graded. One's presentation skills will also be graded under 5% of the class participation. Each group only presents once so it isn't a big problem. The problems in this module are mostly the deceivingly easy kind, meaning they look easy when u first read it but there are tricky parts to the questions. 

The other 5% class participation involves 3% attendance and 2% actual answering of questions in class. I attended all tutorials lol but didn't answer any questions so I didn't score that 2%. I guess is mainly because I took the module alone and was pretty awkward with the other tutorial group members throughout the entire semester. So, I didn't really speak up during class. But, if u just speak up, class participation shouldn't be a big problem. But ofc, you have to answer the question correctly too to earn the class participation mark. 

As for the final 5% group assignment, it involves Prof Qi Mei's portion. We were supposed to talk about a business process using the terminologies we learn in class and then, talk about how we can improve on it. For my group, we talked about how we can improve the queue system in gong cha in utown. It was an interesting interpretation of how the queuing was like in uTown. For this again, we can choose to write a report or something else. But the easiest way to express our thoughts is obviously write a report haha. Ain't too tough to complete in my opinion.

As for my tutor, I feel like he is definitely a good tutor. For tutorials, he would usually summarise the lecture content first, followed by letting the presenting group to present. After that, he'll have some Q&A and then present his own solutions to the tutorial. I feel he summarised the lecture content well. He would usually write his notes on the whiteboard and a student would usually take photo and send to the rest of us. His summarised notes are real helpful in learning. Finally, he would usually ask us a few of his own questions at the end of the tutorial. Whoever can answer them first and correctly will get class participation marks. Some of the questions are MCQ while some are Multi response questions while some are open ended. I didn't managed to answer any of the questions correctly hahaha, so I didn't get my 2% marks. I have to admit that out of all the modules I did this semester, I spent the least time on this module. So, the concepts are quite foreign to me sometimes and I did regret a little. 

Final Exam
The final exam was 2 hours long and consist of 60 MCQ questions. Hahaha this module had a very steep bell curve I guess because of how the finals is like. There are MCQ questions where it is split into 2 questions. Meaning the same question but the options are different for 2 questions. This meant that it's either u get 2 questions right or 2 questions wrong. Super tricky haha. There were wordy questions too where like more than 1 option seems like the right answer. This meant that I had to guess in the end. Thus, I felt I didn't do very well for this paper, as compared to my core modules. The cheatsheet I prepared were more of formulas and it failed to help me for the more wordy questions. You can view my cheat sheet here. 

Expected Grade: A

Final Grade: B+

Final Comments
In my opinion, I didn't spend a lot of time for this module as I thought it would be an easy module. I regretted it in the end. I feel that if you can put in sufficient time to learn the concepts in this module, read the readings given to you, then this module shouldn't be a problem for you. 


Stay tuned for more updates.

- Alan

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