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Business Operations

4.8(22,000) on Coursera·380K enrolled
Beginner 27 hours English University Certificate
SkillsOperations managementProcess designQuality managementProductivitySupply chain basicsService operations

Is this course right for you?

Our take
A solid, quantitatively rigorous grounding in operations management, taught by Wharton. It is free to audit.

Good for: beginners who want the fundamentals of operations and process management.

Skip if: you want hands-on operations tools, or you already work in operations.

Christian Terwiesch covers process capacity and bottlenecks, Little's Law and queuing, quality management and Six Sigma, and the cost-quality-speed trade-offs of supply chains, applied to real scenarios across manufacturing, healthcare, retail and services. It is more mathematical than most MOOCs in the subject.

It is concept-and-model led, so it does not cover hands-on operations tools or software, and someone who already works in operations will find it basic. The certificate needs a paid Coursera subscription; the free audit covers the learning. The principles are durable and still relevant.

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About this course

This Wharton School course covers operations management from first principles: analyzing process capacity and bottlenecks, applying Little's Law and queuing models to service operations, implementing quality management and Six Sigma concepts, and optimizing supply chain trade-offs between cost, quality, and speed.

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Instructor

CT
Christian Terwiesch
Coursera instructor
380K+ learners6 courses4.8 instructor rating

Taught by Christian Terwiesch and Karl Ulrich from Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, two of the most respected operations management academics.

Frequently asked questions

Both work. It is one of the courses in Wharton's Business Foundations specialization, which also covers marketing, finance, and accounting, but it stands perfectly well alone if operations is the only area you want to strengthen right now. Take it on its own for the process-analysis toolkit, or as part of the wider specialization if you want a rounded grounding in business fundamentals.

How to analyse and improve business processes: measuring capacity and finding bottlenecks, managing inventory, improving quality and productivity, and matching supply to demand. The tools apply to manufacturing and service businesses alike, giving you a structured way to see exactly where a process loses time or money — the kind of diagnostic lens that turns a vague sense that 'things are slow' into a specific, fixable problem.

It is analytical and framework-driven rather than a hands-on toolkit you apply the same afternoon. You learn concepts and calculations — process analysis, the effect of variability, inventory logic — illustrated with real company examples. The practical payoff comes when you take those frameworks back to your own workplace and use them to diagnose a real process, which is where the abstract ideas start earning their keep.

Managers, analysts, founders, and anyone whose work involves delivering a product or service efficiently. It assumes no operations background and suits people who want the vocabulary and underlying logic of process improvement without committing to a full MBA. If you have ever wondered why a workflow bottlenecks or how much capacity a process really has, this gives you the tools to answer it properly.

Yes, you can audit it on Coursera and watch all the lectures at no cost. The graded assignments and the certificate require a subscription, with financial aid available if you apply through Coursera and are approved. If you want the operations frameworks and the worked examples rather than a formal credential, auditing gives you the substance of the course for nothing.
Paid
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