The Olympic Games: An Organizational Planning And Control Research Project

Earlier papers introduced and described the concept of students as empowered employees in a “classroom factory.” The factory mission is to achieve previously agreed collaborative research objectives, deliver final reports describing findings and conclusions all as a corollary to student learning. The primary purpose of the course, IE334, is to develop or improve the students’ abilities, understanding and appreciation for the “soft skills” of organizational planning and control. It is recognized that “experiential learning,” or “learning by doing,” produces a superior classroom experience to uninvolved reading, listening or watching the wielding of chalk (unless this is done under the tutelage of the most exceptional, superb and captivating teachers!). This class usually enrolls between 40 and 50 students, mainly IE seniors, but with a scattering of juniors and individuals with other engineering majors; there are just occasionally one or two business and graduate students. The class is divided into teams that are required to develop a product in the form of a significant research report with an accompanying presentation to their peers. Each team is given responsibility for the specification of their own research objectives and deliverables within the pre-selected topic area. There are also subsidiary individual and team exercises designed to support the prescribed learning objectives.