MSc Global Logistics, Operations, and Supply Chain (Management)

This module is designed to enhance your employability by developing your team working, management, and leadership skills, capabilities, and attributes alongside key inter-personal and intra-personal skills. You will not only prepare for your career after graduation but also kick-start your commitment to life-long personal and professional learning. The module will also involve applying theoretical frameworks and researching contemporary literature for a more ind-depth understanding.

During the first part of this module, you will complete a self-analysis to demonstrate your self-awareness and self-understanding. A leadership and team-building event, where you will complete problem-solving activities in culturally diverse teams, will provide further feedback on your potential and areas for development.

The second part of the module will build upon your self-analysis to help you explore your strengths, weaknesses, and areas for development in the context of your career development plans. Our Graduate Futures team will help you research your career of choice, using labour market data and other resources, to improve your career readiness. Your understanding of self will help you identify the employability challenges you may face in your target profession or industry.

Throughout this module, you will develop your knowledge of the global graduate market (including routes such as self-employment and career development with an existing employer), drawing on local, national, and international examples.

Global Operations and Supply Chain Improvement is very important for any business leader. It encompasses a range of activities; from product and service enhancement to maintaining and sustaining well-managed supply networks, with a focus on efficiency, quality, and technology application.  

To advance your knowledge of operations and supply chain improvement, you will investigate ongoing developments, both in theory and practice, within the global context. By learning about strategic theories, you will gain knowledge associated with internal and external performance improvements that enable value chain strategies to be put in place.  

Online lectures will develop your theoretical knowledge, and you will link theory with practice during interactive activities and seminars to develop your problem-solving skills. Your overall learning experience on this module will be research-led through directed study, which involves:

• up-to-date individual and team-based research
• research tutored through seminar activities, assessing internationally oriented contemporary outputs
• research that develops the competencies associated with assessing and evaluating academic outputs

This module will be assessed through enquiry-based critical evaluation of contemporary challenges in a global operations and supply chain context. 

This module is designed to equip you with the necessary knowledge, skills and techniques to develop Strategic Supply Chain Relationships. Furthermore, it emphasises the contribution of Logistics and Supply Chain Management to organisational strategy, with a focus on managing innovation in supply chains, particularly international supply chain relationships.

You will examine case studies of manufacturing and service supply chains during this module, with a strong emphasis on relationships within your learning. Consideration will be given to the logistics partnership, supplier and partnership development, making change happen, and developing frameworks for managing change.

An international focus is recognised by consideration of cross-cultural management and exploration of intercultural encounters taken from the supply chain management perspective. Through an interactive Business Simulation, you will gain valuable strategic decision-making experience, including operations management decisions, to reinforce the strategic nature of your learning.

Your experiences on the module are underpinned by research-rich learning, where the academic work of the teaching team and others will inform your learning experience. By linking theory to practice, this showcases enquiry-based learning and the role of reflective practice, that builds on the practitioner and research experience of the module teaching staff.

This module aims to provide you with an appreciation of the synergy between strategic procurement and international logistics management. Focus is given to processes that add value through the production and delivery of services and products in the supply chain, and the tools needed to manage these processes effectively.

The content on this module focuses on two key areas:

1. purchasing and supply chain management
2. materials management and international logistics

You will gain a comprehensive understanding of contemporary approaches to strategic procurement and international logistics management throughout the supply chain. For example, you will be introduced to some of the digital aspects in supply chains and supply chain continuity management and how these aspects can be managed from a strategic procurement and international logistics perspective. In addition, you will be introduced to the advantages of various aspects of digitalisation in relation to international logistics and strategic procurement.  

On completion of the module, you will be able to critically analyse the approaches to managing procurement and international logistics management used by a variety of product and service organisations operating in a global business environment, which will inform an individual report-based assessment. 

Research-rich learning plays crucial role in the module, particularly placing you as the participant through enquiry-based and research tutored interventions which inform both your interactive seminars and your summative assessment. These interactive seminars also serve the purpose of formatively assessing your understanding of the concepts taught during the lectures and their practical applications.

This module will provide you with essential knowledge and analytics skills needed for you to complete a high-quality Masters Dissertation, Consultancy Project, or Management Enquiry.  

By undertaking and reflecting on practical research-based activities you will understand the process of designing and carrying out a research study. You will also engage in activities that involve an understanding of data and the analysis of data. This will place you in a strong position to undertake your own Masters level research, Consultancy Project, or Management Enquiry.  

At the end of the module you will write a research proposal, which will be assessed and will contribute to your final mark. When you write your dissertation, you will work under the supervision of a member of academic staff and this proposal will help to ensure you get the most from that relationship.  

The research methods skills developed in this module will be critical in developing your ability to collect, analyse, and interpret data.

This module applies concepts of supply chain sustainability, resilience, and risk to contemporary issues of risk and sustainability that impact 21st Century Supply Chains and their associated networks.  

Greening supply chains, ethics, sustainability, and risk resilience are key themes which cover salient, local to global issues, such as decarbonisation within logistics, wider global supply chain externalities like Climate Change, and, most recently, the Covid-19 pandemic.   

This module will provide you with a thorough understanding of the tools and techniques necessary to analyse, evaluate, and implement best practice to generate risk-resilient and sustainable supply chains as part of a broader inclusive Circular Economy. You will also critically review the principles and applications of Supply Chain Risk Management and Sustainable Supply Chain Management in the context of risk and vulnerability in commercial environments.  

As this module is research led and research tutored, you will learn about research through wider subject reading to supplement various management theories presented during lectures. You will also be asked to conduct independent and group research regarding supply chain sustainability, resilience, and risk theories, which aim to expose you to enquiry-based learning to inform your interactive seminars and assessment. 

You will design a research project, assessed through the prerequisite 20-credit module, BM9718 Research Methods and Analytics for Business Practice, proposal and will then work under the supervision of a member of academic staff who will give you appropriate guidance and support throughout the dissertation process whilst encouraging learner autonomy: this is your dissertation and you will have responsibility for decision making as the dissertation proceeds.  
 
On completion of this module, you will be able to conduct research and organise the findings into a comprehensive and explicit structure that is critically assessed and is linked to the conclusions drawn.  You will demonstrate this by identifying a topic, critically selecting and applying an appropriate research methodology and data collection method(s), demonstrating a rigorous understanding of the relevant theory and literature and showing how these link to the research method(s).  You will also critically reflect on how your research contributes to the understanding of the topic area. 

This module aims to support your study, language and communication skills for academic purposes in the study in your chosen discipline at postgraduate level. It is designed to enable you to become an advanced independent learner.  

The module is supported by a teaching and learning plan which outlines the formal sessions. Interactive workshops will be tailored to address some of the specific issues that you meet within your discipline. You may also be asked to complete some preparation tasks for some seminars but these will be kept to a minimum. You will be expected to identify those skills which you need within your postgraduate programme, and to develop these independently through a range of learning activities that might include extended reading and reflection.