Results for OIT

This course provides basic skills in quantitative modeling. The objective is to familiarize students with the main steps in an analytical approach to business decision making: constructing an abstract model for a relevant business problem, formulating it in a spreadsheet environment such as Microsoft Excel, and using the tools of optimization, Monte Carlo simulation and sensitivity analysis to generate and interpret recommendations. The class will be taught in a lab style, with short in-class exercises done in small teams, focusing on a variety of applications drawn from advertising, healthcare, finance, supply chain management, revenue and yield optimization.

The course is similar in content and emphasis to OIT 245, but is aimed at students who already have background or demonstrated aptitude for quantitative analysis, and thus are comfortable with a more rapid coverage of the topics, in more depth and breadth.

Data and Decisions an introductory course in probability, statistics and decision analysis. Our goal is to teach you how to evaluate quantitative information and to make sound decisions in complex situations. 'D&D' combines two areas of management science: The first area, probability, provides a foundation for modeling uncertainties, such as the uncertainties faced by financial investors or insurers. We will study the mechanics of probability (manipulating some probabilities to get others) and the use of probability to make judgments about uncertain events. The second area, statistics, provides techniques for interpreting data, such as the data a marketing department might have on consumer purchases. Statistical methods permit managers to use small amounts of information (such as the number of people switching from Verizon to AT&T in an iPhone test marketing program) to answer larger questions (what would AT&T's new market share be if the iPhone is launched nationally?)

This course focuses on the intersection of strategy and information technology. It considers how you can take advantage of new technology opportunities and how they change the structure of firms, industries and value chains, with an emphasis on business issues. Classes combine lecture and case study discussions and the workload is above the GSB average.

This course focuses on basic managerial issues arising in the operations of both manufacturing and service industries. The objectives of the course are to familiarize students with the problems and issues confronting operations managers and to introduce language, conceptual models, and analytical techniques that are broadly applicable in confronting such problems. The spectrum of different process types used to provide goods and services is developed and then examined through methods of process analysis and design.

This is the base version of D&D. This course introduces the fundamental concepts and techniques for analyzing risk and formulating sound decisions in uncertain environments. Approximately half of the course focuses on probability and its application. The remainder of the course examines statistical methods for interpreting and analyzing data including sampling concepts, regression analysis, and hypothesis testing. Applications include inventory management, demand analysis, portfolio analysis, surveys and opinion polls, A/B testing, environmental contamination, online advertising and the role of analytics in business settings more generally. The course emphasizes analytical techniques and concepts that are broadly applicable to business problems.

Data and Decisions - Accelerated is a first-year MBA course in probability, statistics, multiple regression analysis, and decision trees for students with strong quantitative backgrounds. Probability provides the foundation for modeling uncertainties. Statistics provides techniques for interpreting data, permitting managers to use small amounts of information to answer larger questions. Regression analysis provides a method for determining the relationship between a dependent variable and predictor variables. Decision tree analysis consists of quantitative approaches to decision making under uncertainty. Students taking this course need to be comfortable with mathematical notation, algebra, and some calculus. If you are not confident with your quantitative abilities, then you should enroll in OIT 265. Accelerated D&D will cover material covered in OIT 265 faster and in more depth. One main difference is that Accelerated D&D will cover the additional topics of advanced multiple regression analysis (e.g., correction for autocorrelation), discrete dependent variable models, and panel data. A multiple regression group project is required.

Data is everywhere. Firms collect it. Data on customers' preferences are collected through websites or loyalty programs or cash registers. Data on employees' traits are collected through in-house databanks or social networking sites. All of us are used to thinking about data. How can you make data relevant to doing your job? How can data analysis serve to increase your competitive advantage over that of others? This class goes beyond graphing data in bar charts or time trends. It makes you think about causal relationships. The examples we use are primarily taken from talent management, because it's easy to think about our own careers or those of our employees. But the tools covered extend to all contexts, and your project is on an idea of your choosing. The class focuses on the use of regressions to think experimentally. To take the class, you should have covered regression analysis in a former class (such as an econometrics course for economics majors) or be comfortable with learning basic math concepts quickly. You also should understand distributions of data (such as the Bell curve, or normal distribution), but this topic is not covered. There are no required proofs or derivations; you've done that as undergraduates. This is about using data: we use cases, examples, Notes written for the class, and a quiz, final exam, and several assignments in which you play with data sets to answer questions. Note that this 4-unit course, if successfully completed, counts for the Data Analysis foundations requirement.

This course focuses on basic managerial issues arising in the operations of both manufacturing and service industries. The objectives of the course are to familiarize students with the problems and issues confronting operations managers and to introduce language, conceptual models, and analytical techniques that are broadly applicable in confronting such problems. The spectrum of different process types used to provide goods and services is developed and then examined through methods of process analysis and design.

This course is a Bass Seminar. Project course jointly offered by School of Engineering and Graduate School of Business. Students apply engineering and business skills to design product or service prototypes, distribution systems, and business plans for entrepreneurial ventures that meet that challenges faced by the world's poor. Topics include user empathy, appropriate technology design, rapid prototype engineering and testing, social technology entrepreneurship, business modeling, and project management. Weekly design reviews; final course presentation. Industry and adviser interaction. Limited enrollment via application; see http://extreme.stanford.edu/index.html for details.

This course is a Bass Seminar. Project course jointly offered by School of Engineering and Graduate School of Business. Students apply engineering and business skills to design product or service prototypes, distribution systems, and business plans for entrepreneurial ventures that meet that challenges faced by the world's poor. Topics include user empathy, appropriate technology design, rapid prototype engineering and testing, social technology entrepreneurship, business modeling, and project management. Weekly design reviews; final course presentation. Industry and adviser interaction. Limited enrollment via application; see http://extreme.stanford.edu/index.html for details.

Design for service innovation is an experiential course in which students work in multidisciplinary teams to design new services (including but not limited to web services) that will address the needs of an underserved population of users. Through a small number of lectures and guided exercises, but mostly in the context of specific team projects, students will learn to identify the key needs of the target population and to design services that address these needs. Our projects this year will focus on services for young adult survivors of severe childhood diseases. For the first time ever, children who have cystic fibrosis, rheumatoid arthritis, major cardiac repairs, organ transplants, genetic metabolic disorders, and several forms of cancer are surviving. The first wave of these survivors is reaching young adulthood (ages 18-25). Many aspects of the young adult world are not yet user-friendly for them: applying to and then entering college, adherence to required medication and diet, prospects for marriage and parenthood, participation in high school or college sports, driving, drinking, drugs, and more. Our aspiration is to develop services to improve these young adults? options for a fulfilling and satisfying life. The course is open to graduate students from all schools and departments: business (MBA1, MBA2, PhD, Sloan), Medicine (medical students, residents, fellows and postdocs), engineering (MS and PhD), humanities, sociology, psychology, education, and law. Students can find out more about this course at: http://DesignForService.stanford.edu; GSB Winter Elective BBL Jan 10th, 12 noon - 1 pm; D-School Course Exposition Feb 3rd, time TBA. Admission into the course by application only. Applications will be available at http://DesignForService.stanford.edu on Jan 13th. Applications must be submitted by Feb 4th midnight. Students will be notified about acceptance to the course by Feb 7th . Accepted students will need to reserve their slot in the course by completing an online privacy training course. Details about online training will be provide to accepted students. The training is related to the protection of our partners' privacy. Application Deadline: Noon, Feb 4th.

This course focuses on the intersection of strategy and information technology. It considers how you can take advantage of new technology opportunities and how they change the structure of firms, industries and value chains, with an emphasis on business issues. Case studies include Salesforce.com, Apple, Netflix, Evernote, Linden Lab (Second Life), Amazon.com and Zappos. Classes combine lecture and case study discussions and the workload is above the GSB average. While the advanced course will generally cover the same topics as OIT 256, it will go into more advanced techniques in a number of areas.

Globalization of businesses has resulted in companies having to manage global networks of suppliers, integrators, contract manufacturers, logistics service providers, distributors, and service support operators in geographically dispersed locations. The customer network is also globally distributed. This course will focus on (1) how global and international companies can overcome the geographical, cultural, and organizational barriers, and leverage the strengths of the network to create values, and (2) how these companies may use different ways to manage operations in different regions to take full advantage of the local strengths and limitations. The course will be based on cases on innovative strategies and tactics used by global and international companies.

The objective of this course is to analyze real-world situations where significant competitive advantage can be obtained through large-scale data analysis, with special attention to what can be done with the data and where the potential pitfalls lie. Students will be challenged to develop business-relevant questions and then solve for them by manipulating large data sets. Problems from advertising, eCommerce, finance, healthcare, marketing, and revenue management are presented. Students learn to apply software (such as R and SQL) to data sets to create knowledge that will inform decisions. The course covers fundamentals of statistical modeling, machine learning, and data-driven decision making. Students are expected to layer these topics over an existing facility with mathematical notation, algebra, calculus, probability, and basic statistics.

This is the first quarter of a two-quarter course series (OIT 384/OIT 385). In this course, students learn how to develop comprehensive solutions (most commonly medical devices) to some of the most significant medical problems. The first quarter includes an introduction to needs finding methods, brainstorming and concept creation. Students learn strategies for understanding and interpreting clinical needs, researching literature and searching patents. Working in small entrepreneurial multidisciplinary teams, students gain exposure to clinical and scientific literature review, techniques of intellectual property analysis and feasibility, basic prototyping and market assessment. Students create, analyze and screen medical technology ideas, and select projects for future development. Final presentations at the end of the winter quarter to a panel of prominent inventors and investors in medical technology provide the impetus for further work in the spring quarter. Course format includes expert guest lecturers (Thu: 4:15 to 6:05 pm), faculty-led practical demonstrations and coaching sessions, and interactive team meetings (Tues: 4:15 to 6:05 pm). Projects from previous years included: prevention of hip fractures in the elderly; methods to accelerate healing after surgery; less invasive techniques for bariatric surgery; point of care diagnostics to improve emergency room efficiency; novel devices to bring specialty-type of care to primary care community doctors. More than 300,000 patients have been treated to date with technologies developed as part of this program and more than thirty venture-backed companies were started by alums of the program. Students must apply and be accepted into the course. The application is available online at http://biodesign.stanford.edu/bdn/courses/bioe374.jsp.

Two-quarter sequence (see OIT384 for complete description of the sequence). The second quarter focuses on how to take a conceptual solution to a medical need forward into development and potential commercialization. Continuing work in teams with engineering and medical colleagues, students will learn the fundamentals of medical device prototyping; patent strategies; advanced planning for reimbursement and FDA approval; choosing a commercialization route (licensing vs. start-up); marketing, sales and distribution strategies; ethical issues including conflict of interest; fundraising approaches and cash requirements; financial modeling; essentials of developing a business or research plan/canvas; and strategies for assembling a development team. Final project presentations are made to a panel of prominent venture and corporate investors. New students (i.e. students who did not take OIT384 in the winter quarter) may be admitted, depending on team needs. Candidates need to submit an application at http://biodesign.stanford.edu/bdn/courses/bioe374app.jsp by March 1.

In many of the challenges faced by the modern world, from overcrowded road networks to overstretched healthcare systems, large benefits for society come about from small changes by very many individuals. This course survey the problems and the cost they impose on society. It describes a series of pilot projects which aim to develop principles for inducing small changes in behavior in Societal Networks--transportation networks, wellness programs, recycling systems and, if time permits, energy grids. Students will learn how low-cost sensing and networking technology can be used for sensing individual behavior, and how incentives and social norming can be used to influence the behavior. The effectiveness of this approach in pilots conducted in Bangalore (commuting), Singapore (public transit system), Stanford (congestion and parking), and a wellness program at Accenture-USA will be discussed. Students may experience the incentive platform as participants.nnThis course significantly overlaps with OIT 258 - Incentive Mechanisms for Societal Networks. If you took this class last year, you may not take OIT 558.

This course offers an overview of eight technologies for enterprise computing. They are: ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), EAI (Enterprise Application Interface), data mining, cloud computing, eCommerce, RFID/NFC, mobile technologies, and social network data analytics. On each topic, we discuss underlying technologies and applications using a variety of business cases.

This course examines the development and commercialization of innovative medical technologies in different global settings. Faculty and guest speakers from the medtech field will discuss the status of the industry, as well as opportunities in and challenges to medical technology innovation unique to seven primary geographic regions: Africa, China, Europe, India, Japan, United States and Latin America. Students will be exposed to the biodesign innovation process, which provides a proven approach for identifying important unmet medical needs and inventing meaningful solutions to address them. They will also explore key differences between the covered geographies, which range from emerging markets with vast bottom-of-the-pyramid and growing middle class populations, to well-established markets with sophisticated demands and shifting demographics.

The goal of this course is to provide first-year Ph.D. students in OIT with sufficient fundamentals to subsequently take advanced research seminars. The course covers the very basics of six topics: queueing theory, inventory theory, multi-echelon inventory theory, game theory, stochastic dynamic programming and econometrics. Lectures will be given by advanced Ph.D. students in OIT.

This course provides an overview of research in supply chain management (SCM). It has three parts. The first part reviews basic tools of SCM research through selected readings in economics, IT and operations research. The second part reviews the literature in SCM, covering topics such as inventory models, information sharing, information distortion, contract design, value of integration, performance measurement, risk management, and the use of markets for procurement. The last part is devoted to recent advances in SCM research.

This course covers basic analytical tools and methods that can be used in research in operations and information systems. The emphasis is on foundations of stochastic inventory theory. Basic topics include convexity, duality, induced preference theory, and structured probability distributions. Much of the course is devoted to Markov decision processes, covering finite and infinite horizon models, proving the optimality of simple policies, bounds and computations, and myopic policies.

Processing network models may be used to represent service delivery systems, multi-stage manufacturing processes, or data processing networks. The first half of this two-unit course consists of lectures on performance analysis (e.g., estimating congestion and delay) for classical product-form networks and for Brownian networks. The second half consists of student presentations of recent papers on managing processing networks, typically with game-theoretic aspects. Prerequisites: Statistics 217 and 218, or consent of instructor; some prior exposure to stochastic models in general, and queueing theory in particular, is useful but not essential.

This seminar will highlight the research evolution and advances on the ssmart use of information in supply chain management. Such usage has helped companies sharing information to coordinate their supply chain and to realign their incentives. It has also helped reduce the so-called bullwhip effect. Latest information technology like RFID (radio-frequency identification) has also enabled visibility and structural changes that result in significant supply chain performance enhancements. This seminar will focus on the modeling approaches used by researchers that tried to capture the values and potentials of such applications.

The goal of this course is to provide a comprehensive introduction to the theory and practice of revenue management. It will comprise of a set of lectures that will cover the theoretical fundamentals of the area as well as an overview of current research developments through the presentation and discussion of recent papers. Topics include capacity control (single-resource and network), consumer behavior and market response models, dynamic pricing, procurement auctions, price experimentation, supply chain management and pricing.

The first half of this course will cover (i) the basic theory of Brownian motion, (ii) Ito stochastic calculus, and (iii) the rudiments of continuous-time stochastic control, all undertaken at a brisk pace, aimed at students who already know the basics or else have a strong enough math background to learn them quickly. The text for this part of the course will be Brownian Models of Performance and Control, by J. Michael Harrison, Cambridge University Press, 2013, which can be ordered from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Brownian-Performance-Control-Michael-Harrison/dp/1107018390/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395420072&sr=8-1&keywords=Brownian+Models+of+Performance+and+ControlnnnThe second half of the course will explore in depth some models arising in operations research, finance and economic theory, such as the McDonald-Siegel investment model (an optimal stopping problem, treated in Chapter 5 of the textbook), Brownian versions of the classic cash balance problem (a family of stochastic control problems, treated in Chapter 7 of the textbook), and Yuliy Sannikov’s continuous-time principal-agent model (Review of Economic Studies, 2008). The course will be rather informally organized, more of a collaboration between students and instructor than a top-down lecture format, with at least half of the class time devoted to presentation of problems by students and auditors.

This course is offered for students requiring specialized training in an area not covered by existing courses. To register, a student must obtain permission from the faculty member who is willing to supervise the reading.

This course is elected as soon as a student is ready to begin research for the dissertation, usually shortly after admission to candidacy. To register, a student must obtain permission from the faculty member who is willing to supervise the research.

In many of the challenges faced by the modern world, from overcrowded road networks to overstretched healthcare systems, large benefits for society come about from small changes by very many individuals. This course survey the problems and the cost they impose on society. It describes a series of pilot projects which aim to develop principles for inducing small changes in behavior in Societal Networks--transportation networks, wellness programs, recycling systems and, if time permits, energy grids. Students will learn how low-cost sensing and networking technology can be used for sensing individual behavior, and how incentives and social norming can be used to influence the behavior. The effectiveness of this approach in pilots conducted in Bangalore (commuting), Singapore (public transit system), Stanford (congestion and parking), and a wellness program at Accenture-USA will be discussed. Students may experience the incentive platform as participants.

One of the most interesting and underexplored areas in modern technology is, as Dan Reicher at Stanford has put it, "where energy technology (ET) meets information technology (IT)". The main driver of widespread use of computing in the modern age is the rapid reduction in the cost of computing services caused by Moore's law. At the same time, a substantial increase in the energy efficiency of computing (doubling every year and a half for more than six decades) has led to a proliferation of mobile computers, sensors, and controls, with implications that have only recently begun to be understood.nnnThis class will explore the direct and indirect implications of applying information technology to the production, delivery, and use of energy and associated services. It will first review current knowledge about the direct energy use associated with information technology, including data centers, personal computers, cellular telephones, mobile sensors, and other IT equipment. It will also summarize the state of knowledge about the types, amount, and growth rates of energy services delivered in the US and globally. Finally, it will explore the applications to which information technologies have been put in the energy industry, ranging from the use of visualization and analysis techniques to improve the results of oil and gas exploration, to the computer-aided design of wind turbines and automobiles, to the implications of wireless sensors and controls for the more efficient and effective use of energy. The class will culminate in student projects, typically business plans for new ventures using IT to radically transform how we understand and respond to the world around us.

In tandem with OIT 603, this course explores the application of stochastic modeling and optimization to two closely related problem areas: (a) dynamic price selection, and (b) dynamic allocation of limited capacity to competing demands. As background, students are assumed to know stochastic process theory at the level of Statistics 217-218, microeconomics at the level of Economics 202N, and optimization theory at the level of MS&E 211, and to have some familiarity with the basic ideas of dynamic programming. Additional dynamic programming theory will be developed as needed for the applications covered. Emphasis will be on current research topics, especially in the realm of airline revenue management.

In tandem with OIT 602, this course explores the application of stochastic modeling and optimization to two closely related problem areas: (a) dynamic price selection, and (b) dynamic allocation of limited capacity to competing demands. As background, students are assumed to know stochastic process theory at the level of Statistics 217-218, microeconomics at the level of Economics 202N, and optimization theory at the level of MS&E 211, and to have some familiarity with the basic ideas of dynamic programming. Additional dynamic programming theory will be developed as needed for the applications covered. Emphasis will be on current research topics, especially involving customized pricing of financial services. OIT 602 is not a prerequisite for OIT 603 but is highly recommended.

The course provides students a strong theoretical background in several fundamental aspects underlying inventory theory. Topics include deterministic inventory models (EOQ, Power-of-two policies, ELS, serial and assembly networks), the Newsvendor model, multi-period stochastic inventory theory, serial and multi-echelon models, approximation algorithms, batch ordering and lost-sales models, infinitesimal perturbation analysis, distribution-free inventory theory, models for joint pricing and inventory decisions. The course also provides an overview of relevant mathematical concepts used in inventory theory, including convexity, duality, probability theory, finite and infinite state Markov decision processes, and comparative statics.

To compete successfully in today's market place, companies need to manage effectively the efficiency of activities to design, manufacture, distribute, service and recycle their products or services to their customers. Supply chain management deals with the management of materials, information and financial flows in a network consisting of suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and customers. The coordination and integration of these flows within and across companies are critical in effective supply chain management. nnnIn parallel to the development of new practices and concepts in industry, there have been emerging research that are based on (1) structuring new processes and supply chain networks with the new technologies; (2) exploring ways to do planning and make decisions consequently; (3) quantifying the benefits as a result; and (4) aligning the incentives of multiple players in a supply chain when the costs and benefits to these players are different. nnnThis course will examine evolutionary research that focuses on the above themes. We will explore how such problems can be formulated, models can be structured, and analysis can be performed to address information-based supply chain management issues. You are all challenged to think, discuss, share, and debate on the issues brought up. The end result of this course is, hopefully, that we can start defining new, interesting and exciting research paths, and maybe even beginning to pursue some of the research ideas generated.

Description is currently unavailable because of ongoing review of the OIT PhD program by OIT faculty. Description will become available when the review is completed at the end of the Summer.