Industrial Management

COURSE CONTENT

Section 1: Decision Making, Introduction, Concepts, Fundamentals of a Decision Making Problem, Conditions & agents in Decision Making, Business Decision Making process, Hard & Soft skills

Section 2: The systemic approach in studying the business, Forms and types of enterprises, Typical schemes of business organization, Basic business operations, The internal and external environment of a business, Stakeholder analysis and stakeholders mapping.

Section 3: Cost, Cost categories, Investment/Capital cost analysis, Analysis of operating/production costs, Fixed and Variable costs, Funding sources for an Investment/Business, Interest amortization, Depreciation.

Section 4: Financial analysis, Financial statements, Balance sheet, Assets/Liabilities, Income statement, Cash-flow statement.

Section 5: Basic concepts in investment appraisal, Cost-effectiveness criteria, Net Present Value (NPV), Internal Rate of Return (IRR), Annual Equivalent, Assessment of alternative investment options, Investments with the same lifetime, Investments with different lifetimes, Life cycle of an investment , Time value of money, Interest, compounding and discounting, Break-even point analysis.

Section 6: Presentation of feasibility study software in Microsoft Excel, Application of a case study, Sensitivity analysis, Risk analysis.

Section 7: Business Decision-making Simulation Game, Introduction, Software presentation, Realization of business game involving student teams.

Section 8: Presentation of the structure and sections of the Business Plan, Analysis of the external environment (PESTEL Analysis), Analysis of the internal environment, SWOT Analysis.

Section 9: Financial ratios, Capital structure, Liquidity, activity and efficiency indices.

Section 10: Introduction to the concepts of corporate social responsibility and corporate sustainability/responsibility, Introduction to the GRI initiative, Reading and evaluating sustainability reports.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

The course aims to equip students and future Mechanical Engineers with the basic knowledge, methods and tools related to Industrial Management and Decision Making. The main concern is the understanding of the systemic approach and systemic analysis, as well as the understanding of the economic dimension of technological options. The course presents the concept of Enterprise, its organizational structure and operation, while focuses on the cost layout and cost categories. The course adopts an integrated approach and presents appropriate methods to support and evaluate the operational and investment decisions of enterprises under a systematic and documented conceptual framework.

Under this course, the students are expected to:

• Understand the concept of economic organizations and the internal / external environment of a business.
• Learn the time value of money and the importance of the time horizon considered for investment analysis.
• Understand the relationship between capacity of an investment/a fixed asset and investment/capital cost.
• Identify the different cost categories and their importance in realizing an investment.
• Be informed about the funding sources of a business and familiarize with the three basic accounting statements.
• Use indicators and criteria to evaluate economic efficiency.
• Make 360_o evaluation of investments under a multidimensional framework.
• Know the basic structure/content of the business plan and the methods of assessing the risks existing in both the internal and external environment of a business
• Familiarize with the management and operation of businesses through learning and using computational simulation tools to support business decisions before and after the implementation of a business activity
• Know the concepts and axes of corporate social responsibility and corporate sustainability/responsibility.