School of Engineering and Digital Sciences
School of Engineering and Digital Sciences
School of Engineering and Digital Sciences
The Master of Engineering Management (MEM) degree program is a specialized degree program offered by the School of Engineering and Digital Sciences (SEDS) in partnership with the Graduate School of Business (GSB) at Nazarbayev University (NU). Students are required to complete 120 ECTS credits, in 4 semesters, which satisfies requirements stipulated by the Bologna Process and the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) for Master’s degrees. The GSB courses are offered at the 2nd semester and are all block-based, delivered as intensive three-weeks courses. SEDS courses, on the other hand, are offered at the other three semesters and are all semester-long, fourteen weeks courses.
The aim of the program is to prepare students with the technical skills and business knowledge for leadership of engineering-related units of enterprises with innovative solutions for complex business problems. Finally, it is the mission of the School to train the future scholars of Kazakhstan. By delivering the Master of Engineering Management program at an international standard level, we are offering our master’s students new opportunities in terms of PhD and positions in research centers, locally or abroad.
Aims and Objectives
The mission of the School of Engineering and Digital Sciences and of the Graduate School of Business of Nazarbayev University is to contribute to the development of Kazakhstan in terms of:
• Educating students with engineering and management expertise to lead organizations and provide innovative solutions for complex technical and business issues of enterprises.
• Conducting innovative and pioneering basic and applied research that evolve the body of knowledge in Engineering Management through interdisciplinary collaboration with other schools and research centers in Nazarbayev University and leading universities worldwide.
• Advancing the professional development in engineering and management through our service to the professional community and providing lifelong learning opportunities for practitioners.
The MEM program aims to reflect the mission of the School of Engineering and Digital Sciences and ofthe Graduate School of Business, and accomplishes this by pursuing the following objectives:
• Provide postgraduate engineers with the current tools, knowledge and skills necessary for a successful career in local and global engineering management.
• Support the progression of engineers of all disciplines to management roles in both private and public sectors.
• Develop future leaders of technology-based organizations by providing a state of the art and applied engineering management curriculum to a select group of high potential students with science and engineering backgrounds.
• Promote the importance of entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship and the core values of ethical enterprise in modern economies.
Total Number of Credits: 120 ECTS
Year 1: Fall Semester (Semester 1)
Year 1: Spring Semester (Semester 2) - GSB
Year 2: Fall Semester (Semester 3)
Year 2: Spring Semester (Semester 4)
Core courses
Quantitative analysis of uncertainty and risk for engineering applications. Review of some fundamental concepts of probability and probability distributions (discrete, continuous, joint). Descriptive statistics, estimation of distribution parameters (method of moments, method of maximum likelihood), statistical intervals, and hypothesis testing.
This course addresses the primary need for graduate students to undertake formal training that will help them in understanding how to conduct their research. The course will develop students’ understanding of research planning and engender skills enhancement for reading, interpreting, writing about and presenting key ideas. The course will also instill an understanding of a variety of research methods and ethics, as well as implementation of appropriate strategies in lecture and workshop settings.
Engineering Management is the integration of human relations, planning and control concepts, systems analysis and design, and principles of management oriented toward engineering functions within an organization; organizational design and administration as they impact along the product life cycle, i.e., research, design, development, production and use.
Engineering Economy is concerned with fundamental concepts and advanced techniques of engineering economic analysis; evaluation of alternative capital investments considering income taxes, depreciation and inflation; discounted cash flow analysis of competing projects, break-even analysis and determination of rate of return on investment, Risk and uncertainty in engineering analysis. This course will help students to explore strategies, models, and practices for leading and managing engineering organizations in a context directly relevant to them. They will engage in self-reflection about their styles, beliefs, and past experiences with leadership and management, and emerge with an insightful understanding of their personal approach as a professional. Besides, students will learn to improve their grasp of the "big picture" and how daily decisions affect the financial performance of an organization. They will learn principles and practices of interpreting financial information and performing engineering-related economic analyses. This course focuses on current practices, using economic information for decision-making and control. Students will practice applying these techniques to applications in real firms.
Engineering Economy is concerned with fundamental concepts and advanced techniques of engineering economic analysis; evaluation of alternative capital investments considering income taxes, depreciation and inflation; discounted cash flow analysis of competing projects, break-even analysis and determination of rate of return on investment, Risk and uncertainty in engineering analysis. This course will help students to explore strategies, models, and practices for leading and managing engineering organizations in a context directly relevant to them. They will engage in self-reflection about their styles, beliefs, and past experiences with leadership and management, and emerge with an insightful understanding of their personal approach as a professional. Besides, students will learn to improve their grasp of the "big picture" and how daily decisions affect the financial performance of an organization. They will learn principles and practices of interpreting financial information and performing engineering-related economic analyses. This course focuses on current practices, using economic information for decision-making and control. Students will practice applying these techniques to applications in real firms.
The course deals with the study and practice of Project Management from project inception to completion. Initially, the knowledge areas, methodologies and approaches for project evaluation and selection among candidate projects are presented, and the necessity to align the project management objectives with the strategy of an organization are highlighted. Then, a step-by-step presentation of the Project Management knowledge areas are performed, starting from Integration Management and passing through Stakeholder Management, Scope Management, Schedule Management, Cost Management, Communications Management and Risk Management, accompanied by elements of Change Management and Earned Value Management. A thorough presentation and analysis of most globally accepted and universally adopted tools, methodologies and techniques is performed, accompanied by the examination of a business case where all such tools are applied. Students work in groups to analyze the business case, to develop appropriate documentation and reports, and to present their results in class, in a strongly interactive context. In parallel, students spend significant time learning and practicing with MS Project 2016, where project modeling, planning, scheduling, optimization, budgeting, resource allocation, baselining, tracking and reporting aspects are examined and practiced for a project that is progressively developed. The acquaintance with this software enables students to profit from their knowledge in the job market and encourages them to pursue relevant certification(s). The entirety of the course strengthens the link between theory and practice and prepares students for employment in local and/or international projects.
The course covers the fundamental principles of financial and managerial accounting. The principal objective of the course is to develop your ability to read, understand, and use corporate accounting information. To achieve this objective, the course introduces the basics of financial reporting (including both the U.S. and international standards) to information users outside of the firm—as well as selected topics on the internal (i.e., managerial) uses of accounting information. Because the course takes the perspective of a user of the accounting information, it focuses on the concepts relevant to decision makers- such as managers, current and prospective investors, creditors, customers, suppliers, and regulators.
In order to understand how accounting reports reflect the underlying economics of the firm and to use them in making forecasts, you should know the basics of record keeping, have a good grasp of the effects of typical business transactions on the accounting statements, and understand the implications of generic business strategies (e.g., product differentiation) for the firm’s financial reports. We will also study the financial reporting environment, the role of the standard-setting bodies and other key players, and the desirable properties of accounting information (e.g., relevance and reliability).
The course focuses on how economic events and transactions are reflected in the firm’s accounting system as financial and non-financial information, and how this information is processed and communicated to the users. To be informed users, you should understand the nature of the decisions at hand; accordingly, the course will draw on the insights from microeconomics, decision analysis, operations management, and finance.
In order to understand how accounting reports reflect the underlying economics of the firm and to use them in making forecasts, you should know the basics of record keeping, have a good grasp of the effects of typical business transactions on the accounting statements, and understand the implications of generic business strategies (e.g., product differentiation) for the firm’s financial reports. We will also study the financial reporting environment, the role of the standard-setting bodies and other key players, and the desirable properties of accounting information (e.g., relevance and reliability).
The course focuses on how economic events and transactions are reflected in the firm’s accounting system as financial and non-financial information, and how this information is processed and communicated to the users. To be informed users, you should understand the nature of the decisions at hand; accordingly, the course will draw on the insights from microeconomics, decision analysis, operations management, and finance.
This course deals with the work and understanding of strategic management. The course adopts the perspective of managers within the corporation, business, division, plant, or other operating unit who must align their individual actions and responsibilities with the overall objectives of the firm. During the course, students will focus on the perspectives and skills required to diagnose and find realistic solutions for critical problems in complex business situations. The course deals with issues of both managerial effectiveness and business efficiency-emphasizing "doing the right things'' as well as "doing things right," while avoiding falling into the trap of doing the wrong things really well. This course will teach strategic skills and techniques that can be used to analyze any situation in any environment. Students will learn how to analyze a case end-to-end and recommend an appropriate course of action.
The focus of this course is the successful creation and early execution of a new venture. The course concentrates on new enterprises based on substantial innovations with potential for high growth and funding by venture capitalists. The course covers the topics of industry entry, new firm formation, the advantages and disadvantages of small firm size for technological competition, achieving and sustaining competitive advantage within industries, and patterns of technology and industry evolution and associated windows of opportunity for entry. In the first part of the course, students will concentrate on opportunity evaluation and business plan development. Then, in the second part of the course students will explore the strategic challenges of managing growth and realizing value. The psychology of entrepreneurs and how that might affect the quality of their decisions will also be considered.
This course examines important issues in corporate finance from the perspective of financial managers who are responsible for making significant investment and financing decisions. The course covers both financial tools and applications. The first part of the course will focus on mastering the tools that lay beneath all modern financial decision making. Broadly speaking, this involves discounted cash flow analysis that appropriately takes into account taxes, as well as equilibrium risk and return trade offs faced by participants in capital markets. The second half of the course explores contemporary issues that will be of importance to anyone seeking a job in the financial markets industry. A wide range of topics will be covered, such as venture capital, private equity, mergers and acquisitions, initial public offerings, and financial distress.
While the course is not designed to dwell on abstraction, the basic theoretical underpinnings of the various topics are a prerequisite to competent analysis. An emphasis is placed on the development of problem-solving skills based on a good understanding of the business environment as opposed to pure theorizing or mindless numbers exercises. Because of the practical importance of the material and as an illustration of the relevant theory, students will discuss examples and cases.
While the course is not designed to dwell on abstraction, the basic theoretical underpinnings of the various topics are a prerequisite to competent analysis. An emphasis is placed on the development of problem-solving skills based on a good understanding of the business environment as opposed to pure theorizing or mindless numbers exercises. Because of the practical importance of the material and as an illustration of the relevant theory, students will discuss examples and cases.
The purpose of this course is to prepare the student to be an effective leader and manager of others regardless of career path, and to be a good analyst of how best to organize people. The course will focus on two broad sets of questions. First, what principles can one draw on to analyze and improve performance in organizations? How can a manager exert influence for positive results at any level of an organization? How can the manager maintain high ethical standards? Students will examine principles for designing incentive systems, motivating employees, running effective teams, making good decisions, harnessing diversity, and organizing the distribution of work. The second set of questions concerns what an individual needs to do to be an effective leader. What can the graduate contribute to his/her firm and why should others respect and listen to him/her? Students will be challenged to reflect on their own personal strengths and weaknesses and to develop specific strategies for making a difference in any organization.
The course will provide you with a systematic framework for understanding marketing management and practice. The classes will combine the theoretical and practical parts following an open discussion format. The course puts emphasis on how to (1) assess marketing opportunities by analyzing customers, competitors, and their own company (the 3 C's), and (2) design effective marketing programs via selecting appropriate strategies for pricing, promotion, place, and product (the 4 P's). Accordingly, this course is organized around these three C's and four P's. While most course sessions emphasize one of these topics, please note that the goal of this course is to prepare you to create a marketing strategy that concurrently addresses all of these points.
This course presents competent communication as a critical component for personal career and organizational success. We will work to understand the foundation of competent communication in the business world as well as to assess and improve our own verbal and written communication to be more effective, clear, appropriately assertive and based on foundations of personal integrity and leadership. Students will practice developing and delivering presentations, using appropriate and effective visual support, which will demonstrate relevance and benefits to audiences at varying levels of expertise and interest. Students will also practice drafting and editing succinct, clear, readable written business documents which create effective and memorable messages.
Consumer behavior is omnipresent; we cannot escape it – every moment of our lives we engage in some form of consumer behavior. It examines the impact of external environmental influences (culture, subculture, social class, reference groups, family, and personal influences) and internal psychological influences (personality, lifestyle, learning, motivation, perception, and self-concept) on consumer decision making process. It explores stimuli that informs, persuades, and influences our choices, purchase decisions, dreams and aspirations.
Consumer behavior is always changing – just think of how consumers spent their time online 5 years ago, compared to their habits today. It is important for companies to understand why and how consumers change their behavior, how these changes affect their perceptions and attitude towards buying and brands. The first step of understanding the change can lead towards predicting the behavior. Once you can predict, you can control. The study of consumer behavior uses concepts, theories, and principles from the social sciences to extend our understanding of factors influencing the acquisition, consumption, and disposition of goods, services, and ideas. You will learn how and why consumers behave by examining how we use products to define ourselves and how this self-concept affects our attention and perception, our motivation to buy, our memory for brands, product and advertising awareness, our brand attitudes, product judgment and choice, customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.
Consumer behavior is always changing – just think of how consumers spent their time online 5 years ago, compared to their habits today. It is important for companies to understand why and how consumers change their behavior, how these changes affect their perceptions and attitude towards buying and brands. The first step of understanding the change can lead towards predicting the behavior. Once you can predict, you can control. The study of consumer behavior uses concepts, theories, and principles from the social sciences to extend our understanding of factors influencing the acquisition, consumption, and disposition of goods, services, and ideas. You will learn how and why consumers behave by examining how we use products to define ourselves and how this self-concept affects our attention and perception, our motivation to buy, our memory for brands, product and advertising awareness, our brand attitudes, product judgment and choice, customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.
How do companies ensure innovative ideas are transformed into a product or service? Irrespective of their size, location, number of employees, revenue margin, or industry segment, all companies transform their innovative strategies into real world products/services. Some companies have well defined transformation steps that they call product/service development process; others simply just do whatever it takes without organized planning. But in general, they all go through major iterative phases such as: discovery, definition, development, demonstration, qualification, deployment, and life cycle management. Furthermore, there are factors that impact all these phases such as: source of funding, people relations, supply chain, design/development tools, time constraints, internal/external regulations, etc. Adequate management of these factors enables the development process to be executed on time and on budget in order to meet customer needs and stakeholders' expectations. This course intends to provide an understanding of the product and service development process elements and the factors influencing the execution of the process.
Optimization is the problem of making decisions to maximize or minimize an objective in the presence of complicating constraints. This course will cover theories, methods, and applications of linear programming, integer programming, nonlinear programming, network models, decision analysis and games. Students will learn optimization methods and their applications to problems in engineering and business. Optimization can bring efficiency throughout the organization and may be used in the design and analysis of engineered systems of all kinds. The course emphasizes on modeling, the process of taking a real-world problem and transforming it into a formulation that can then be solved by the optimization methods. Throughout the course, Microsoft Excel will be used as a modeling environment, using add-in programs as necessary. Familiarity with Excel is an important prerequisite for this course.
The goal of this course is to cover both the high-level supply chain strategy and concepts (the strategic role of a supply chain and the key strategic drivers of supply chain performance: facilities, inventory, transportation, information, sourcing, and pricing) and to give students a solid understanding of the analytical tools necessary to solve supply chain problems. Particular attention is being paid to the managerial context in which the methodologies are used and the managerial levers for supply chain improvement. Special emphasis will be paid to the analysis of case studies of well-known international firms for the students to apply successful supply chains in local firms to improve their performance.
This course explores issues related to planning and controlling the processes used to produce the goods and services provided by an organization. Managing these complex processes including resources such as human resources, materials, inventories, and facilities can be quite challenging. The course will introduce students to the functional area of operations and will increase their knowledge of how a firm's operations interface with the other functional areas of the organization, familiarize students with the various issues and problems that traditionally arise in the management of operations within both manufacturing and service organizations, and acquaint students with some of the methodologies in the handling and resolution of operations issues and problems. The contents of the course include both Production Management and Service Management.
The Capstone Project II is designed to be a reflection of a culminating set of personal, academic, and professional experiences. Students work in teams to apply synthesized knowledge and skills acquired during the course of their education to solve design, construction, and operational problems in real-world world constraints and relevant to the industry. The requirement is that projects must focus on and draw upon selected engineering and management principles and concepts in addressing the challenge.
The Capstone Project (CP) is designed to reflect a culminating set of personal, academic, and professional experiences. Students work in teams to apply to synthesize knowledge and skills acquired during the course of their education to solve design, construction, and operational problems with real-world constraints and relevant to the industry. The requirement is that projects must focus on and draw upon selected engineering and management principles and concepts in addressing the challenge.
The CP is split into two parts: CP I, conducted in Semester 3 of the MEM program, and CP II, conducted in the last 4th Semester.
CP I consists mainly of two (2) concrete activities:
● Identify a faculty CP advisor, an independent research-based project in collaboration with a local company or companies, and a liaison from the sponsoring companies. (This can be across a wide range of industries.)
● Conduct a detailed literature review of the publications that are relevant to the CP proposal.
The CP is split into two parts: CP I, conducted in Semester 3 of the MEM program, and CP II, conducted in the last 4th Semester.
CP I consists mainly of two (2) concrete activities:
● Identify a faculty CP advisor, an independent research-based project in collaboration with a local company or companies, and a liaison from the sponsoring companies. (This can be across a wide range of industries.)
● Conduct a detailed literature review of the publications that are relevant to the CP proposal.
Program Elective Courses
This course explores a framework encapsulating the entire systems engineering discipline and addresses the topics of systems engineering relevant to all professions associated with the complex human-made systems. The course identifies methods for thinking about large, complex problems as an integrated whole, capturing the problem and documenting it systematically; then decomposing the problem into smaller units that can be designed, built, and integrated to achieve the desired result.
The course focuses on the primary knowledge areas and essential competencies required for successful engineers to live and work in today’s global marketplace. The course will examine individual and cultural differences and how they impact communication and team dynamics. These topics are central to international and multicultural engineering teams. Students that complete the course will be able to understand sources of conflict that can arise in multicultural teams and effectively use the tools and resources learned in class to manage individual and team motivation and minimize or effectively deal with conflict, while harvesting the benefits of diversity as they work on a real world virtual team project, producing effective solutions to challenging engineering problems.
Knowledge is considered as one of the most important resources of modern organizations, leading to successful implementation of organizational changes, generation of innovation, and attainment of sustainable competitive advantage. This course, therefore, aims at understanding and implementing concepts and management practices that refer to the effective acquisition, processing, and use of knowledge resources in a way that allows organizations to learn, innovate, adapt to changes occurring in their internal and external environment, and achieve high performance.
The course deals with the use of Big Data methods and Techniques to drive Business Analytics, to conduct inference and to support management decisions; it also deals with the essence of Information Management, traveling from the generation of information to its distribution and passing through its collection, technology, representation and processing. The course includes a broad collection of subjects. The material blends theory and practice, through several examples, illustrates techniques, and uses tools that help apply theoretical concepts. Emphasis is given in group work and on hands-on experience materialized through intriguing projects and extensive practice in the Lab with applied examples.
This course will continue the approach followed in the Engineering Decision Tools course in order to analyze more Operations Research methods and algorithms. The main target is always to show students how to formulate and solve business and engineering problems, using mainly the MS Excel
Solver, add-in programs and other software packages. The course will cover the following topics and models:
• Multiple-Criteria Decision Models: Goal Programming Models
• Waiting Line/Queuing Models, Queuing Network Models and their applications in Service
Systems and Manufacturing Systems.
• Markov Decision Processes
• Monte Carlo Simulation and Simulation Modeling, Optimization in Simulation.
Solver, add-in programs and other software packages. The course will cover the following topics and models:
• Multiple-Criteria Decision Models: Goal Programming Models
• Waiting Line/Queuing Models, Queuing Network Models and their applications in Service
Systems and Manufacturing Systems.
• Markov Decision Processes
• Monte Carlo Simulation and Simulation Modeling, Optimization in Simulation.
The terms Quality and Lean are recognized as the key for the companies which want to satisfy their customers and efficiently manage their resources. The aim of Quality Management is to produce more reliable products and services by decreasing the variability. And the aim of Lean on the other hand is to increase productivity by value creation and elimination of waste. The objective of this course is to teach students the definition of both quality and lean with differences and similarities and their implementation in production and service industries. The course covers the general concepts and principles of quality management and lean production such as customer focus, value creation, process management, value stream mapping, waste removal, visual management and continuous improvement.
Digital Transformation Concepts is an immersive course meticulously designed to empower students with a comprehensive grasp of the principles and applications of digital transformation across diverse sectors. This course delves into the technological, managerial, and policy facets of digital transformation, with a specific emphasis on how technological advancements shape the landscape of firms, markets, supply chains, and regulatory frameworks.
Through a well-rounded blend of theoretical foundations, real-world case studies, and hands-on practical applications, students will not only acquire a profound understanding but also develop the skills to navigate the strategies, leadership approaches, and challenges inherent in the implementation of digital transformations.
The course will feature hands-on exercises and case studies that will guide students in the practical application of digital transformation principles to effectively address complex engineering management problems. Students will develop problem-solving skills that are essential for implementing digital strategies in real-world scenarios. Recognizing the evolving dynamics in emerging economies, this course will highlight the unique aspects of digital transformation in such contexts. Students will gain an understanding of the challenges and opportunities specific to these regions, preparing them to navigate the complexities of global digital transformation initiatives.
Through a well-rounded blend of theoretical foundations, real-world case studies, and hands-on practical applications, students will not only acquire a profound understanding but also develop the skills to navigate the strategies, leadership approaches, and challenges inherent in the implementation of digital transformations.
The course will feature hands-on exercises and case studies that will guide students in the practical application of digital transformation principles to effectively address complex engineering management problems. Students will develop problem-solving skills that are essential for implementing digital strategies in real-world scenarios. Recognizing the evolving dynamics in emerging economies, this course will highlight the unique aspects of digital transformation in such contexts. Students will gain an understanding of the challenges and opportunities specific to these regions, preparing them to navigate the complexities of global digital transformation initiatives.