Course description
MSc Process Manufacturing Management
This course is aimed at developing managers, and those with management potential, who wish to follow careers in the process industries. The course is unique in that it has been specifically designed for scientists, engineers, technologists and managers in this important industrial sector and is tailor-made to their needs.
More information
Stage 1
Introduction and Professional Studies
This module is designed to introduce you to the issues related to studying beyond undergraduate level. It applies to students on taught postgraduate courses and those who are embarking on a programme of research. The module encompasses issues such as enrolment, health and safety, using Blackboard, report writing and referencing, ethics, plagiarism, time management and numerical techniques. You will also examine discipline specific areas pertinent to your pathway, which will offer you a particular grounding, skills base or understanding required at the early stage of your study. You will be introduced to personal development planning, by keeping a formal log book.
Management of Change
This module seeks to develop a critical understanding of developing business strategy as a starting point to change. You will focus on business processes and process engineering. You will then develop a more generalised understanding of managing change with particular emphasis on aspects of people management.
Manufacturing Systems
This module considers typical hardware and software involved with automated machinery and production processes. It will show you how machines can be integrated into flexible cells and flexible manufacturing systems and, when linked with appropriate production management software, into computer integrated manufacturing systems.
Stage 2
Mass and Energy Balances
This module introduces you to calculations on a wide range of chemical and refinery processes. In the process industries it is important to be able to predict the flows of matter and energy at any point in the plant. By equating inflow and generation with outflow and accumulation, you can develop a remarkably powerful tool for the analysis of processes.
Quality and Supply Chain Management
This module demonstrates how to benchmark an organisation and introduces you to the concepts of key performance indicators, total quality management (TQM), six sigma, total productive maintenance (TPM) and supply chain management. You will learn the manufacturing assessment methodology based on data provided in a benchmarking case study. Topics covered in TQM, TPM, and supply chain management will enable you to plan activities, which will improve quality programme maintenance planning and supply chain integration for an organisation and move that organisation towards sustainable competitive advantage.
Process Simulation and Economics
This module builds on the Mass and Energy Balances module by introducing computer-aided techniques through HYSIS - a process simulator package. The topic is extended to include time-dependant processes including some basic control theory. Some ideas on process costing and economics are also included. Topics include steady-state modelling, using HYSIS, process dynamics and control, capital and manufacturing cost estimation and process economics.
Stage 3
Research Project
This is the culmination of the programme of studies. You will undertake a challenging problem related substantially to your discipline. The project is linked where possible to an industrial or external partner organisation, which may even host your work and substantially direct the activity. Where this is not possible, a real or simulated real problem may be chosen as subject for the work. It is, however, expected that even where the problem is simulated or hypothetical, it will be treated as if real. The project outcomes project should be at a publishable standard.
Course structure
Core modules include Management of Change, Manufacturing Systems, Process Mass and Energy Balances, Quality and Supply Chain Management, Process Simulation and Economics.
Careers
Graduates can expect to be employed in areas within the chemical, process and petroleum processing sectors.
Industrial experience
On this Master's degree you'll complete an industrially-related project. This, along with the involvement of industrialists, practitioners and academics in the delivery of this course, ensures that it is relevant to the demands of the process manufacturing industries.
Intermediate awards
Our master's degrees can lead to the award of a postgraduate certificate at Stage 1 (60 credits - 3 modules), a postgraduate diploma at Stage 2 (120 credits - 6 modules) or, on completion of a research project, the MSc.
Block release study
The course is available on a block release basis: you'll usually study for one week between 9.00am and 6.00pm with follow-up days in the next four weeks together with accompanying assignment work.
