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Research Article

Utilizing Single-Period Inventory Experiment Results for Production and Operations Management Education

Kwak, Jingyeong

Ewha Womans University

Published: January 2014 · Vol. 43 No. 5 · pp. 1519-1528
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Abstract

This study investigates how we can improve the quality of education of Operations Managementby analyzing the results of Newsvendor experiments. The Newsvendor experiments wereconducted by Korean college students, who were taught the Newsvendor model at OperationsManagement class within 1 year. Given the expected demand information only, they had todecide order quantity by asking and using more information that they thought they need for theinventory decision. As a result of the experiment, most respondents were not able to identifythe important information that is critical to deciding optimal order quantity. Particularly, theywere poor at understanding demand distributions in the decision making processes. Finally,most of them failed to decide the optimal order quantity based on the information they have. Inthis paper, we pursue to improve the quality of education of Operations Management with theexperimental results. By utilizing VPA (verbal protocol analysis) methodology, we may helpstudents to identify necessary information properly and actively, and to improve their decisionmaking abilities through considering their individual weakness. Furthermore, we suggest openingsome sessions about demand distribution before teaching inventory models and illustrating somespecific examples about how we can develop demand distributions based on the past demanddata. These will enhance the students' understanding of demand distributions.
Keywords: 단일기간 재고 의사결정(Newsvendor problem)행태적 운영관리(behavioral Operations Management)