Area Information and Operations Management

In a modern digital economy, many companies create products and services that require and create vast amounts of information, anywhere and at any time. Physical goods produced or sold by those companies are often digitally controlled and connected with Information Systems such as smartphones, PCs, vehicles, robots, or entire computer-controlled manufacturing systems. For this reason, the decisions about what a company produces and how it operates are always connected to decisions about Information Systems and processes. This is why Information & Operations Management is an already hot field of growing importance.

The extensive amount of digital information created by those Information Systems has to be analysed and utilised in a systematic way using "Big Data Business Analytics/Visualization" methods. Those methods, often rooted in the fields of Statistics and Operations Research, again require computers to create knowledge and to support automatic or hybrid, i.e. human-machine, decision making in real time in a way that was unconceivable only a few years ago. An example is the Operations Management problem to create and adapt schedules for call centre agents to continuously provide fast customer service at low staffing cost.

The Master research topics in Information & Operations Management stem from practical applications, often in cooperation with private companies. They are driven by current developments such as Mobile Computing, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, Industry 4.0, Renewable Energies, Electro-Mobility, or demographic changes in societies or urbanisation. Those developments together with the progress of Information Technology create new questions, problems, business models, and hence research questions. Those questions require a thorough and fact-based quantitative analysis to support good decision making. To this end, new methods of analysis and decision support need to be (further) developed and implemented. They are presented to the public in research publications and at conferences.

Information & Operations Management is the field for you if you enjoy working with computers, if you like Mathematics and Statistics, and if you feel comfortable to use and develop computer programs and applications. Information Management also requires qualitative analysis. Operations Management, in turn, is deeply rooted in Mathematics and Statistics. Here you will have to develop and implement mathematical models and to learn programming and customizing, in particular for your theses work. In any case you enjoy to work precisely and independently to solve open-ended questions using formal methods.

Due to the comprehensive digital transformation of organisations, processes and technologies, the career prospects are excellent for all those who who can analyse and solve Information & Operations Management problems using up-to-date “Big Data Business Analytics/Visualization” methods. This will also require and reward excellent written and oral communication skills as well as the social skills of productive team work. Graduates with a thorough qualification in this field will find promising starting positions in consulting firms, in software companies, in manufacturing as well as service industries, and in the public sector. Furthermore, the area Information & Operations Management offers best opportunities to start scientific working and a scientific career with a Ph.D.