Lean thinking, as well as associated processes and tools, have involved into a ubiquitous perspective for improving systems particularly in the manufacturing arena. With application experience has come an understanding of the boundaries of lean capabilities and the benefits of getting beyond these boundaries to further improve performance. Discrete event simulation is recognized as one beyond-the-boundaries of lean technique. Thus, the fundamental goal of this text is to show how discrete event simulation can be used in addition to lean thinking to achieve greater benefits in system improvement than with lean alone. Realizing this goal requires learning the problems that simulation solves as well as the methods required to solve them. The problems that simulation solves are captured in a collection of case studies. These studies serve as metaphors for industrial problems that are commonly addressed using lean and simulation.

Word Count: 113331

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Students in an introductory Management Information Systems (MIS) course often ask what a career in MIS looks like. Lacking a clear vision, they make their own assumptions. Often they assume the career involves programming with little human interaction. That MIS is a technical field could not be further from the truth. MIS job descriptions typically require candidates to be able to collaborate, communicate, analyze needs and gather requirements. They also list the need for excellent written and communication skills. In other words, MIS workers are constantly interacting with other people both inside and outside the organization. They are coming up with creative solutions to business problems.

This course is designed to help students get a feel for what a career in MIS would be like. Our students report that they learn more about information systems from their internships than from their IS courses. Consequently, we designed a course that looks very much like an internship—an introduction to the field followed by a substantial project.

Speaking & Presentation Skills for Business

Word Count: 5495

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Short Description:
This OER textbook focuses on the foundations of entrepreneurship and starting a business. The text is divided from the theoretical underpinnings of the discipline; entrepreneurship traits and characteristics and the activities that precede starting a business.

Long Description:
Given the financial challenges students face in higher education, my hope with this textbook is to draw on my 20+ years of entrepreneurship experience and academic research to compile resources that reflect the general aspects of starting a business. Business Startup and Entrepreneurship: Canada is an Open Educational Resource (OER) textbook that focuses on the practical, current, and relevant topics associated with starting a business in Canada. This broad practical approach allows instructors to introduce these simple chapters to build a basic understating of the essentials to startups.

Along with this textbook is an accompanying Business Plan Workbook, helping students to work through a business idea chapter-by-chapter that hopefully culminates in a well thought-through startup plan. In my experience teaching introductory entrepreneurship courses, developing a business plan supports deep-level learning that is displayed through critical analysis, creativity, and networking. The design of the business plan has been simplified and tested over the past three years with over 750 students from diverse cultures and academic disciplines. It is my recommendation that students work on the business plan throughout the duration of the course as they complete chapters to reaffirm important lessons. Students may find tasks such as finance and accounting difficult, which is why an Excel Worksheet accompanies the business plan to help prepare financial reports for their proposed businesses.

Word Count: 115289

ISBN: 978-1-988692-57-9

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Knowing where to start can be exceedingly difficult when confronting the myriad changes that accompany online and digital learning initiatives. This field guide curates change management resources to aid individuals in identifying obstacles, needs, and opportunities as they build a coalition of support for continuous improvement in online education.

Continuous Improvement in Action

Short Description:
This is a multimedia-enabled case in which students will be guided, by an industry expert, to apply structured problem-solving that addresses a typical supply chain problem, missing parts. What first appears as the issue may be a symptom of a root cause(s). The case utilizes videos, data files for analytics, audio recording, and videogame-style exercises to find the missing box of parts. The case is a collaboration between the Conestoga Centre for Supply Chain Innovation and ATS Automation and utilizes the ATS Business Model (ABM) approach to identifying and solving root causes. The case can be used in any Continuous Improvement course or program for either Business or Engineering students.

Long Description:
This is a multimedia-enabled case in which students will be guided, by an industry expert, to apply structured problem-solving that addresses a typical supply chain problem, missing parts. What first appears as the issue may be a symptom of a root cause(s). The case utilizes videos, data files for analytics, audio recording, and videogame-style exercises to find the missing box of parts. The case is a collaboration between the Conestoga Centre for Supply Chain Innovation and ATS Automation and utilizes the ATS Business Model (ABM) approach to identifying and solving root causes. The case can be used in any Continuous Improvement course or program for either Business or Engineering students.

Word Count: 5680

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Short Description:
This book provides mini-cases for HRD and other disciplines to use for engaging students in incident discussions. Exploring ways to solve problems and make decisions about situations that occur at work.

Long Description:
This book is intended to be used as a supplement to courses across various fields of study but has direct correlations with human resource development and workforce development. Instructors in any field of study where students examine the work environment and the treatment of employees will find useful scenarios that can be used to facilitate discussions. The topics in this book and supplemental readings can enrich the conversations around enhancing workplace environments and better worker engagement. Without supportive workers, organizations cannot achieve all goals to the extent desired. Workers may exert the effort required to keep their jobs, but they may not exceed performance requirements because they are experiencing scenarios similar to those in this book and their needs are not being met appropriately.

Leaders and workplace trainers may find this supplement useful when introducing subjects that are perceived to be controversial in the workplace. They can allow employees to discuss these scenarios and provide possible solutions to similar scenarios that are encountered at work. Providing a safe environment to discuss intentional and unintentional situations that arise may improve the work climate and lead to unimaginable solutions. Strengthening communication between workers and leaders can improve team performance and ultimately, organizational success.

Word Count: 12056

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Supplemental reading for LD820 MS in Leadership Course at Granite State College, NH

Word Count: 50854

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Short Description:
Customer centricity is about organizational transformation making the customer the focus for business decisions, processes, product development, services, and procedures. Some companies purport to be customer centric but they fall short in connecting this concept throughout all functional areas of the business. While it is important to offer superb customer service, being customer centric is far more than that. It's about mapping the customer journey to discover customer needs and wants, what's working and what is not, then taking action to improve the customer experience. Customer loyalty is built through providing exceptional customer experiences. This in turn increases revenues through positive company image, referrals, and increased customer lifetime value. Most organizations today realize that they must focus on the customer to remain competitive.

Word Count: 44793

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Short Description:
This book presents novel research results in the dynamics of values, rationality, and power in organizations. Through this understanding, readers will gain insights and frameworks to understand others' actions within their environment. Armed with the knowledge of how values, rationality, and power influence people's actions, readers will gain tools they can use to navigate the complexity of organizations to foster wise action.

Long Description:
Can we develop organizational and managerial wisdom? Can we even put words like “organization” and “manager” in the same sentence as wisdom?

You bet we can.

This book presents novel research results in the dynamics of values, rationality, and power in organizations. Through this understanding, readers will gain insights and frameworks to understand others’ actions within their environment. Armed with the knowledge of how values, rationality, and power influence people’s actions, readers will gain tools they can use to navigate the complexity of organizations to foster wise action.

Word Count: 61795

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This Book Will Be Helpful to:

Managers-
This book is aimed primarily at those who are responsible for implementing accessibility at an organizational level. These people tend to be managers, but may also be accessibility specialists, whose role it is to oversee the implementation of accessibility strategies and awareness throughout an organization.

Web Developers-
Web developers may also wish to read this book to expand their understanding of the organizational aspects of implementing accessibility, extending their role as an IT accessibility specialist, often being the person who leads the implementation of accessibility culture in an organization.

Everyone Else-
While managers and web developers are the primary audience for this book, anyone who has an interest in the aspects of implementing accessibility culture in an organization will find this book informative.

This book contains eight chapters. Chapter Two briefly describes the technology that makes electronic commerce possible, while Chapter Three introduces the topic of Web strategy. The major functions of marketing are described in the next five chapters: Promotion (Chapter Four); Promotion and Purchase (Chapter Five); Distribution (Chapter Six); Service (Chapter Seven); and Pricing (Chapter Eight). The final chapter takes a broader, societal perspective and discusses the influence of electronic commerce on society.

The author's goals in writing Exploring Business were simple: (1) introduce students to business in an exciting way and (2) provide faculty with a fully developed teaching package that allows them to do the former. Toward those ends, the following features are included in this text:1- Integrated (Optional) Nike Case Study: A Nike case study is available for instructors who wish to introduce students to business using an exciting and integrated case. Through an in-depth study of a real company, students learn about the functional areas of business and how these areas fit together. Studying a dynamic organization on a real-time basis allows students to discover the challenges that it faces, and exposes them to critical issues affecting the business, such as globalization, ethics and social responsibility, product innovation, diversity, supply chain management, and e-business.2- A Progressive (Optional) Business Plan: Having students develop a business plan in the course introduces students to the excitement and challenges of starting a business and helps them discover how the functional areas of business interact. This textbook package includes an optionalintegrated business plan project modeled after one refined by the author and her teaching team over the past ten years.3- AACSB Emphasis: The text provides end-of-chapter questions, problems, and cases that ask students to do more than regurgitate information. Most require students to gather information, assess a situation, think about it critically, and reach a conclusion. Each chapter presents ten Questions and Problems as well as five cases on areas of skill and knowledge endorsed by AACSB: Learning on the Web, Career Opportunities, The Ethics Angle, Team-Building Skills, and The Global View. More than 70% of end-of-chapter items help students build skills in areas designated as critical by AACSB, including analytical skills, ethical awareness and reasoning abilities, multicultural understanding and globalization, use of information technology, and communications and team oriented skills. Each AACSB inspired exercise is identified by an AACSB tag and a note indicating the relevant skill area.4- Author-Written Instructor Manual (IM): For the past eleven years, Karen Collins has been developing, coordinating and teaching (to over 3,500 students) an Introduction to Business course. Sections of the course have been taught by a mix of permanent faculty, graduate students, and adjuncts.

Financial Statements & Present Value Models

Short Description:
This book is for those whose financial management focus is on small businesses. For you, we adapt the traditional financial management themes emphasized in corporate financial management courses to meet the needs of small businesses.

Long Description:
This book is for those whose financial management focus is on small businesses. For you, we adapt the traditional financial management themes emphasized in corporate financial management courses to meet the needs of small businesses.

Many financial managers of small businesses come from farms or agribusinesses. Others are interested in working for or starting businesses in the food or retail sectors. In most cases, these businesses aren’t organized as C-corporations impacting things like taxes, depreciation, and legal requirements around compiling and reporting financial data. They are rarely publicly traded which creates unique constraints to raising debt and equity capital and calculating required risk-adjusted returns.

These financial managers are interested in solving specific problems they face in family or small businesses. They want to know how to apply the tools they are learning—coordinated financial statement analysis, present value analysis, management of cash flow, measuring their opportunity costs, etc.—to the problems they face at home. As we started to work on the actual problems faced by these managers, it quickly became clear that corporate finance tools don’t exactly fit the small businesses they come from. Further, in attempting to tackle the problems they bring, we learned that finding and/or constructing the data needed for financial management is another skill set often overlooked and in need of development. In the end, after investing a lot of time, we found that—without adaptation—corporate finance theory as traditionally taught doesn’t meet the knowledge needs and application skills of financial managers of small businesses. We wrote this book to be a catalyst that enables students and managers of small businesses to learn the tools and skill sets that will help them make sound financial management decisions.

Word Count: 179566

ISBN: 978-1-62610-114-2

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Word Count: 38420

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An Essential Guide to Management Principles

Short Description:
The purpose of this book is to give the reader a foundational understanding of the four functions of management - planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. Additionally, the reader is equipped with the historical progression of management, ethical decision making, as well as an introduction to business strategy.

Word Count: 32388

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Short Description:
Return to milneopentextbooks.org to download PDF and other versions of this textNewParaThe purpose of this book is to help boards of directors of nonprofit organizations improve their performance after completing the Board Check-Up, online board performance self-assessment tool found at www.boardcheckup.com. This book is also valuable as a stand-alone resource for any board seeking to assess its performance in that it contains the diagnostic questions on which the online self-assessment tool is based. It goes further by providing a framework for boards to use in discussing needed changes in board performance. It also forms an integral part of a University at Albany, SUNY online course titled, The Governance of Nonprofit Organizations. This massive open online course (MOOC) can be taken for free or academic credit through Coursera’s online teaching and learning platform. For more information about this book, the Board Check-Up, and the nonprofit governance MOOC, please contact Prof. Yvonne Harrison at yharrison@albany.edu.

Long Description:
The purpose of this book is to help boards of directors of nonprofit organizations improve their performance after completing the Board Check-Up, online board performance self-assessment tool found at www.boardcheckup.com. This book is also valuable as a stand-alone resource for any board seeking to assess its performance in that it contains the diagnostic questions on which the online self-assessment tool is based. It goes further by providing a framework for boards to use in discussing needed changes in board performance. It also forms an integral part of a University at Albany, SUNY online course titled, The Governance of Nonprofit Organizations. This massive open online course (MOOC) can be taken for free or academic credit through Coursera’s online teaching and learning platform. For more information about this book, the Board Check-Up, and the nonprofit governance MOOC, please contact Prof. Yvonne Harrison at yharrison@albany.edu.

Word Count: 28333

ISBN: 978-1-942341-00-0

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Human Resource Management teaches HRM strategies and theories that any manager—not just those in HR—needs to know about recruiting, selecting, training, and compensating people.

Most students will be managing people at some point in their careers and not necessarily in a human resource management capacity. As businesses cut back, they may outsource HR duties to outside vendors. Or, in smaller businesses, the HR department is sometimes small or non-existent, and managers from other departments have to perform their own HRM. Therefore, teaching HRM from the perspective of a general manager, in addition to an HR manager, provides more relevance to students' careers and will give them a competitive advantage in the workplace.

This text also provides practical applications of theory relevant to today's workplace. You won't find discussions about “posting vacancies on a job board” or “sending memos.” In the real world, HRM leverages technology in every aspect of the job—from online training modules to technology for better managing flex-time workers and telecommuters.

Consider how most companies have gone “paperless” with pay stubs by using software. While such technology has made HRM easier, it has also created a new set of challenges. For example, how does a manager actually implement a new pay system? Therefore, it's important for students to understand what kinds of platforms exist in today's workplace to enhance their effectiveness as future managers.

The conversational style of Human Resource Management engages students, while the academic rigor of its content provides them with the tools that any manager needs—whether they work in HR or a different department. PLUS it offers an array of supplements that gives them practice creating real HR documents and role-playing real HR scenarios. Add value to your students' education, enhance the relevance of your curriculum, and make your students more employable by adopting this book for your HRM class. Read it now online today!

Short Description:
Human Resources in the Food Services and Hospitality Industry is one of a series of Culinary Arts open textbooks developed to support the training of students and apprentices in British Columbia’s foodservice and hospitality industry. Although created with the Professional Cook, Baker and Meatcutter programs in mind, these have been designed as a modular series, and therefore can be used to support a wide variety of programs that offer training in foodservice skills.

Long Description:
Human Resources in the Food Service and Hospitality Industry is one of a series of Culinary Arts open textbooks developed to support the training of students and apprentices in British Columbia’s foodservice and hospitality industry. Although created with the Professional Cook, Baker and Meatcutter programs in mind, these have been designed as a modular series, and therefore can be used to support a wide variety of programs that offer training in foodservice skills.

Other books in the series include: Food Safety, Sanitation, and Personal Hygiene Working in the Food Service Industry Workplace Safety in the Food Service Industry Meat Cutting and Processing Basic Kitchen and Food Service Management Nutrition and Labelling for the Canadian Baker Understanding Ingredients for the Canadian Baker Modern Pastry and Plated Dessert Techniques

The series has been developed collaboratively with participation from public and private post-secondary institutions.

Word Count: 21099

ISBN: 978-1-7753524-8-8

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