Where to Locate? A Project-Based Learning Activity for a Graduate-Level Course on Operations Management

Location decisions represent an integral part of firms' strategic planning process. Because these decisions have a significant impact on the organization, location analysis is a recurrent topic on operations management courses. In this study, we posit that students enrolled on such courses should experience location decisions actively. To this end, this paper proposes an activity that adopts a student-centred approach. The main purpose is for students to acquire the required technical skills to deal with location decisions. Furthermore, the activity is designed in such a way that it also helps students develop some of the soft skills that operation managers should possess, such as teamwork and digital skills. The activity mimics a real-life situation, with students asked to decide where to locate a specific new public service in the city of Barcelona, Spain. This activity was part of a course on operations management, included in the master's degree in engineering management and production systems taught at the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya. The results suggest that the proposed projectbased activity helps students to improve relevant skills needed by project managers. By providing students with the opportunity to take part in a location decision that simulates a real-life situation, the activity enhances students' experience-based learning.