Week 3 — Design for supply-chain sustainability

Thursday, 15 October 2026 · Heizer Ch. 5 + S5

ChapterHeizer Ch. 5 — Design of goods and services; S5 Sustainability in the supply chain · eLibrary (university network or VPN)

Morning testnone

Bonus sheetone this week: the Week 2 sheet (moved from 8 Oct) · counts toward Test 2 · the Week 3 questions are online as exercises

Group projectproduct registered on ILIAS today · introduction at 14:00 · description

Times09:00–13:00 · 14:00–16:00 (changed for this week)

A balanced line is the end of process improvement and the beginning of design: a footprint is a sum of amount × emission factor, so find the biggest stage first and cut where a tonne costs least.

Learning goals

  • See the limit of the bottleneck — once the line is balanced, only the product and its chain can change
  • Read a product as a flow — eight input-output steps from raw material to end of life
  • Name the design levers — shape, packaging, concentration, material, modularity, lifetime
  • Calculate a footprint — amount × emission factor, stage by stage; the biggest stage first
  • Compare over the life cycle — life cycle cost, crossover, € per tonne of CO₂e saved
  • Plan a cut — cheapest tonne first, under a budget

Before Thursday

  • Read Supplement 5 (the video case on Frito-Lay at its end is used in class) and skim Ch. 5 as background; Supplement 5 is Test 2 reading, Chapter 5 itself is not tested.
  • Group project: register your product on ILIAS by today.
  • Bring a calculator: the Week 2 bonus sheet is written in class.
The line: every station adds a part — the Week 2 question was which station is slowest · AI-generated video (Gemini)
The loop: a bike designed to come apart again — the Week 3 question is what the product itself must change · AI-generated video (Gemini)

Bring

Laptop (Google account) · calculator · pen · phone

Thursday

Morning · 09:00–13:00Paper-plane line (three rounds: find and fix the slowest station) · flow map: from a balanced line to product design, two rounds with famous cases · staying up to date: a dialogue with an AI learning coach · Frito-Lay book case and the footprint widget · influence map of the party footprint · Week 2 and Week 3 bonus sheets

Afternoon · 14:00–16:00Group project introduction · case: Backhaus Kaya Part 2 “The carbon clause” · Colab footprint planner

  • Five folding stations, one slow one; three rounds of two minutes: push in batches, one-piece flow, move a person
  • Last week’s words only: slowest station, output per two minutes, share of the time busy
  • Then the question of the day: what do you improve once every station is equally fast?
  • Eight boxes from raw material to end of life; the factory is only one of them
  • Round 1, pairs, no laptop: your own ideas for a product you know, four questions per box
  • Round 2: ten famous cases (IKEA, Nike, Puma, Fairphone, …) sorted onto the map — which box, which lever?
  • Paste the prompt below into the AI assistant of your choice and answer its questions, one at a time
  • You leave with a small “information diet” — a newsletter, a podcast, one or two blogs, one academic channel — each one checked by you
  • Starting list: Operations Management blogs, compiled by Torbjørn Netland, ETH Zurich
ROLE
You are a learning coach for a Bachelor student in a Sustainable Supply Chain
Management module (TH Köln). Your goal: help the student build a small, realistic
routine for staying up to date on best practices in operations and supply chain
management (OSCM), and finish with concrete recommendations.

RULES FOR THE DIALOGUE
- Run a short dialogue (about 6–8 exchanges in total). Ask ONE question at a time
  and wait for my answer. Keep each of your turns under 120 words until the final
  recommendation.
- Never invent a podcast, newsletter, website or URL. If you can browse, check that
  each source exists and has published something in the last 12 months. If you
  cannot check, label the source "not verified – please check" instead.
- Treat vendor or consultancy content as marketing until shown otherwise, and say
  so when you recommend it.

PHASE 1 – UNDERSTAND ME (2–3 questions)
Find out: (a) which OSCM topics interest me most (e.g., lean/process improvement,
purchasing, logistics, sustainability, analytics/OR); (b) how much time per week I
realistically have; (c) whether I prefer listening, reading or watching, and in
which language(s).

PHASE 2 – TEACH ME TO JUDGE SOURCES (1 exchange)
Briefly explain four criteria for a good source: who is behind it (credibility),
whether it is still active (currency), whose interests it serves (independence),
and whether it explains why something works, not only what happened (depth).
Then show me the starting list below and ask me which two entries look most useful
for my interests.

STARTING LIST (compiled by Prof. Torbjørn Netland, ETH Zurich, at
https://better-operations.com/links/ – his short notes are in quotes)
Operations management blogs:
- The Operations Room – "by Faculty at Kellogg School of Management"
  (operationsroom.wordpress.com)
- Jay and Barry's OM Blog – "by Barry Render and Jay Heizer"
  (heizerrenderom.wordpress.com)
- Michel Baudin's Blog – "by Michel Baudin, the Takt Times Group" (michelbaudin.com)
- Lean Blog – "by Mark Graban, KaiNexus" (leanblog.org)
- All About Lean – "by Christoph Roser" (allaboutlean.com)
Supply chain and logistics blogs:
- Global Supply Chain Blog – "by Faculty at the UCLA Anderson School"
- Global Supply Chain Musings – "by Ananth Iyer, Krannert School of Mngm"
- Supply Chain Management Research – "by Andreas Wieland, CBS" (scmresearch.org)
Operations research blogs:
- Punk Rock Operations Research – "by Laura McLay, U. of Wisconsin-Madison"
- O.R. by the beach – "by Tallys Yunes, U. of Miami"
Professional associations: EurOMA, POMS, INFORMS, IPSERA, Nofoma, APMS, AIM,
Academy of Management OSCM Division; plus the ETH Zurich POM YouTube channel.
Additional candidates (podcasts/newsletters): Lean Blog Interviews podcast
(Mark Graban), MIT Supply Chain Frontiers podcast and MIT CTL newsletter,
Supply Chain Now podcast, Supply Chain Dive newsletter (also a procurement edition).

PHASE 3 – LET ME CHECK ONE MYSELF (1 exchange)
Ask me to open one of my two chosen sources and report back: the date of the most
recent post, and who writes it. Comment on what I found. (Hint: this list is
several years old; some blogs have gone quiet. Finding that out is part of
the exercise.)

PHASE 4 – FINAL RECOMMENDATION
Close with a short "personal information diet" table with columns:
Format | Source | Why it fits me | How often | Minutes per week | Verified (yes/no)
Include at most: 1 newsletter, 1 podcast, 1–2 websites/blogs, 1 academic or
association channel (e.g., a journal alert or association newsletter). The total
time must fit the weekly budget I named.
Below the table, add (1) a one-line routine (e.g., "Monday commute: podcast;
Friday 15 min: newsletter skim"), (2) one sustainability-focused source if none
is in the table yet, and (3) one question I should ask myself after four weeks
to decide whether to keep or drop a source.

Start now with your first Phase 1 question.

Follow-up prompt (option) — turn your choice into a weekly routine:

Can you build me a regular newsletter / cron job, looking once a week through stuff on the websites linked here and giving me a concise summary of things that I find interesting? https://better-operations.com/links/
Ask me 5 questions to narrow down what I find interesting in the OSCM space.
  • The video case at the end of Supplement 5: who pushes, which techniques, which stage first
  • Footprint = Σ amount × emission factor · life cycle assessment · reduce, reuse, recycle · scopes 1–3
  • Open the footprint widget → (works on a phone)
  • After the widget, each of you picks one factor of the party’s CO₂e and looks up key sources for its assumptions
  • One item per group — the drinks, the pizza, …
  • The group draws an influence map: the factors, the arrows between them, each factor’s share in %, the sources beside it
  • Week 2 sheet with the Week 2 formula sheet; it counts toward Test 2
  • The Week 3 questions are not a bonus sheet: they are online as Week 3 exercises with answers
  • Scan and upload to ILIAS, file name = code name · rules: Assessment
Note14:15 · Case: Backhaus Kaya, Part 2 — “The carbon clause”
  • FrischMarkt adds a carbon clause to the roll contract: the footprint of a roll, the vans, the crates, and a plan to cut it
  • Read alone, solve in your team, recommend in the plenary
  • Case handed out in class

Homework

  • Warm-up sheet Parts B and C: Solved Problem S5.2 (school buses) and the campus shuttle — life cycle cost, crossover, tonnes saved; the key appears here after class
  • Colab: finish the footprint planner
  • Prepare for Test 2 (Thu 22 Oct): read Supplement 5 with its three cases and work through their questions; practise with the Week 3 exercises (footprint, life cycle cost, cost per tonne, with answers). What Test 2 asks: Week 4 · Test 2 preparation. Chapter 5 itself is not tested.

Downloads

After class: the case, the warm-up sheet with its key, the solved notebook.

Optional reading

  • Bisinella, V., Albizzati, P. F., Astrup, T. F., & Damgaard, A. (Eds.). (2018). Life cycle assessment of grocery carrier bags (Environmental Project No. 1985). Danish Environmental Protection Agency. https://www2.mst.dk/Udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614-73-4.pdf
  • Porter, M. E., & Kramer, M. R. (2011). Creating shared value. Harvard Business Review, 89(1–2), 62–77.