What Are the Best Business Schools?
You are looking for a business school and you do not know where to enroll? A ranking might help. One of these rankings is from Bloomberg Businessweek. As part of their 2013 Best Undergraduate Business Schools ranking, they have now published the top 10 business schools in the area of operations management, an area that focuses on “the processes involved in production and everyday business operations, whether on an assembly line, a supply chain, or even something as common as a movie theater queue”. And these are the top 10 undergraduate business schools for operations management in the U.S.: (1) Pennsylvania (Wharton), (2) Washington (Olin), (3) Carnegie Mellon (Tepper), (4) Worcester Polytechnic, (5) Michigan (Ross), (6) North Carolina State (Poole), (7) North Carolina (Kenan-Flagler), (8) Boston U., (9) Georgia Tech (Scheller), (10) Buffalo. As I have discussed for the case of journal rankings some weeks ago, rankings always have advantages and disadvantages and should, therefore, be handled with care. However, Bloomberg Businessweek’s ranking can, at least, provide some indications.
Global Manufacturing Outlook 2013
The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Global Manufacturing Outlook 2013, written on behalf of KPMG, is out now. It is based on an international survey of more than 300 senior executives from five industries. The report demonstrates that competitive advantage can be secured by enhancing supply chain networks for efficiency and innovation. Particularly, it is demonstrated that (1) many manufacturers are planning mergers or acquisitions to seize opportunities in global markets, and they plan to exit non-profitable, non-core business units and product lines; (2) many manufacturers are building network relationships with suppliers to become more responsive to market changes; (3) supply chain visibility beyond tier-1 partners can have a positive impact on agility, resilience, and performance; (4) supply chain partnerships, rather than in-house efforts, are increasingly seen as an important source of innovation; and (5) manufacturers are investing in both breakthrough and incremental innovation to ensure competitiveness. In sum, the report highlights the importance of supply chain management for manufacturers.
The Science of Operations and Supply Chain Management
The Journal of Operations Management has now published two interesting articles about the science of operations and supply chain management. These two articles are intertwined and they were written by Singhal and Singhal (2012). The first article is titled Imperatives of the science of operations and supply-chain management and discusses two opportunities for pursuing radical innovations. The first opportunity is the pursuit of all phases of science (including theory development and theory testing). The second opportunity is the pursuit of multiple perspectives (e.g., based on different methods and different parts of a system). The second article is titled Opportunities for developing the science of operations and supply-chain management and proposes and analyzes ways to seize these two opportunities. It is found that networks of research teams, outliers, and meta-analyses can help to obtain multiple perspectives and to discover radical innovation. In conclusion, both articles will help our community to further develop SCM research.
Operations Management Journal Ranking
Update: This ranking is relatively old now. It might not reflect the current situation anymore.
Operations management (OM) and SCM are closely interlinked. A citation analysis conducted by Petersen et al. (2011) shows what journals operations management researchers were referencing in their research published in three major operations management journals between 1999 and 2005 (IJOPM, JOM, and POM). These are the ten most referenced journals: Management Science, Journal of Operations Management, Harvard Business Review, International Journal of Operations & Production Management, Production and Operations Management, Strategic Management Journal, Decision Sciences, Academy of Management Review, European Journal of Operational Research, and Sloan Management Review. A full list can be found in the article. Not all referenced journals fall in the domain of operations management. Also operations research (OR)/management science, general management, and marketing journals inspire the field of operations management. Both the citation analysis and the meta-analysis are interesting supplementations to other rankings such as the VHB-JOURQUAL ranking and rankings based on impact factors. Keep in mind that journal rankings have a downside and should not be the only criteria for judging the value of our research.
