Master Operations Management with the IBD's First Short Course Series

When considering a career in the beverage industry, many of us were enticed in by the waft of sweetness from a freshly made mash, the heady scent of the angels’ share or the feeling of pride at seeing our perfectly dressed bottle on a supermarket fixture. The same was probably not true of the thought of a flawless departmental budget, improved sigma level or surpassing a key performance indicator target. Superficially it may not seem the case, but as a modern beverage production professional, a successful career and a successful organisation depend on your effectiveness at managing operations. Even if you don’t call yourself a manager, you’d be amazed at how much management you do!

I didn’t used to be an operations management evangelist. I yawned my way through ops management lectures at university, daydreaming about the perfect beer that I would one day bestow upon humanity leading to world peace and an end to the climate crisis. I saw it as a world of buzzwords and largely rebranding common sense and charging large businesses lots of money for it. It was only when I started needing to manage operations personally that I started to see the value. Over the years, gaining a deeper understanding of the principles, processes and tools of operations management made my core role of making drinks easier and enabled me to interact more effectively with colleagues from other functions. I’m still working on world peace and the end to the climate crisis.

Management science is quite different to the science we are used to as beverage production professionals. Everything is theory and concept, and this can make studying management science hard going. The new Operations Management short course series has been designed by beverage professionals to be practical, clear and applicable to your working life. Another feature of management is that new versions of the same principle are marketed as the best thing since sliced bread and all earlier versions are dismissed as embarrassing mistakes of the past. The new Operations Management short course focuses on the principles themselves rather than how they are currently packaged, so what you learn is valuable for ever.

The idiom “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing” applies to operations management. If you only know the theories or latest buzzwords there is a risk that you may be ineffective. There is also a risk that you might embrace or purchase a management system that is at best a waste of time or at worst counterproductive. You can Google most of the subjects of the new short course series and find reams of information, quite a bit of which fits into the category of dangerous knowledge. What you learn in the Operations Management short course series should enable you to tell a good idea from a good sales pitch!

The Operations Management short course series breaks operations management down into these individual topics:

• Quality Management
• Operations Strategy and Planning
• Project Management
• Production Management
• Financial Management
• Supply Chain Management
• World Class Manufacturing (WCM)
• Lean Operations

The courses are available individually and as a discounted short course series. They can be studied in any order or in isolation. Each subject is covered in detail, from first principles, in a way that is easy to digest and most importantly applicable to your day-to-day life as a beverage production professional.

Although management science is more consciously applied in large organisations, organisations of all sizes can benefit from its principles. In fact, beverage production professionals in small and medium sized enterprises are more likely to wear many hats including that of the operations manager. Probably the biggest benefit of this course is the potential for career advancement. You might be really good at making nice products but it’s unlikely that you’ll progress if you can’t manage a project, understand a profit and loss statement or set and meet SMART objectives. 

Author: Stuart Howe, Technical Development Manager