Business Management

Code:

M.EMAT004

Acronym:

GE

Keywords
Classification	Keyword
OFICIAL	Management

Instance: 2024/2025 - 1S

Active?	Yes
Responsible unit:	Department of Industrial Engineering and Management
Course/CS Responsible:	Master in Materials Engineering

Cycles of Study/Courses

Acronym	No. of Students	Study Plan	Curricular Years	Credits UCN	Credits ECTS	Contact hours	Total Time
M.EMAT	35	Syllabus	1	-	6	45,5	162

Teaching language

Portuguese and english
Obs.: Todo o material estará em Inglês e as aulas serão leccionadas em inglês caso haja alunos estrangeiros.

Objectives

Upon completing this curricular unit, the students shuold be able to:

1. Understand the econonomic and social context in which companies operate


2. Grasp the (classical) purposes of management: organize, coordinate, plan and control efficiently the scarce resources used to produce products or services


3. Understand how the classical approach is unfit for tackling the challenges of contemporary firms, which are more focused on knowledge rather than on processes


4. Identify the different streams of management: corporate finance, supply chain management, human resources management, innovation management, etc.


5. Reason from an engineering perspective and apply Systems Thinking, critical for solving business management problems


6. Analyse opportunity costs, trade-offs and evaluate projects from an economics perpective (cost-benefiit and cost-effectiveness analysis)


7. Be knowledgeable and apply the principles and methods of corporate finance, supply chain management and innovation management


8. Manage the company of the future

Learning outcomes and competences

We hope this curricular unit will help developing and enhancing competences in four dimensions:

1. Disciplinary knowledge and reasoning


2. Personal and professional skills and attributes


3. Interpersonnal skills: teamwork and communication


4. Conceiving, designing, implementing, and operating systems in the enterprise, societal and environmental context

More specifically, we hope students will be able to work on the following competences (following CDIOs 2.0 framework of learning outcomes):

1.1 Knowledge of underlying mathematics and science
1.2 Core engineering fundamental knowledge

2.1 Engineering reasoning and problem solving
2.2 Experimentation, investigation and knowledge discovery
2.3 Systems thinking
2.4/2.5 Attitudes, ethics, equity and other social responsibilities

3.1 Teamwork
3.2 Communication
3.3 Communication in foreign languages

4.1 External, societal and environmental context
4.2 Enterprise and business context
4.3 Conceiving, systems engineering and management

Working method

Presencial

Program

The syllabus will start from the general (socio-economic and environmental context) and drill down to the particular (business management) starting by introducing general concepts about economics and environmental economics that will help students understand the firm's activity with regards to the dynamic context where it operates.

1. The origins of management

• Theory of the firm


• Efficient management of resources and process improvement


• Organization, coordination, planning and control

2. Evaluating trade-offs: cost-benefit analysis and other decision-making metrics

• Normative criteria for decision-making


• Cost-benefit analysis


• Optimality and efficiency


• Static and dynamic efficiency


• Case study: pollution control


• Cost-effectiveness analysis


• Fragility and ergodicity

3. Corporate finance

• Basic concepts of financial mathematics


• Present and future value. NPV, IRR


• Capital budgeting and Analysis of Investment Projects

4. Supply chain management

• Forecast


• Inventory management


• Capacity management


• Production planning

5. Innovation management

• Product, service and process innovation


• Adoption at the individual and market level


• Creativity and idea management


• Innovation strategies


• Executing innovation projects

Mandatory literature

Apontamentos e transparências das aulas

Teaching methods and learning activities

A weekly session of 3,5h will be dedicated to the presentation of the program topics, the detailed discussion of those topics, exercises, and the assignment. In the last two cases, the session will take place in a computer classroom, and the exercises and quizzes will be done with spreadsheet software.

Software

Microsoft Excel
Beer Game with a difference

keywords

Social sciences > Economics > Management studies
Social sciences > Economics

Evaluation Type

Distributed evaluation with final exam

Assessment Components

Designation	Weight (%)
Exame	50,00
Trabalho prático ou de projeto	50,00
Total:	100,00

Amount of time allocated to each course unit

Designation	Time (hours)
Estudo autónomo	117,00
Frequência das aulas	45,50
Total:	162,50

Eligibility for exams

Presence in classes according to FEUP regulations and scoring at least 7 (out of 20) in the final exam.

Calculation formula of final grade

The final grade is given by 50% x AD + 50% x E, where:

• AD is the grade in the continuous assessment component;
• E is the grade in the final exam, which must be at least 7 (in 20) points.

The continuous assessment grade is given by 80% x PG + 10% x P, where:

• PG is the project of the group 
• P is the individual presentation of parts of PG during the course and at the end of the course

Special assessment (TE, DA, ...)

The students with the right to a special evaluation must participate in the course project and attend the midterm test. They are, however, excused from classes.

Classification improvement

Grades can be improved by a final exam in the appeal period.