Mario Silva

As a United States Marine Corps veteran and an executive at my firm, I applied to the University of Arkansas’ MSOM program in order to gain the practical experience I would require to oversee intricate business operations. For professionals like myself who wish to improve or refresh our knowledge of managing businesses and operations, the MSOM program was ideal. Through this program, I was able to learn from professors and business leaders while also developing valuable skills that I could use right away in my line of work.

Learning about boosting efficiency, the global business environment, supply chains, human resource strategies, and leadership principles was incredibly enjoyable for me. I also enjoyed learning about and putting the Ten Operations Management Decisions into practice in order to lead and manage both short-term and long-term business operations. 

Some of my favorite classes were OMGT 5623: Strategic Management, OMGT 5253: Leadership Principles, and OMGT 5783: Project Management for Operations Managers. In my OMGT 5623: Strategic Management course I developed several projects that established, implemented, and assessed cross-functional decisions to help an organization to accomplish its goals. The OMGT 5253: Leadership Principles course presented several case studies on the traits of effective leadership and the moral attributes that make someone a good leader. And lastly, in my OMGT 5783: Project Management course I successfully constructed a final project that used program evaluation and review techniques and applied the critical path method to determine the tasks the were crucial for project completion.

By using what I learned in the MSOM program I have been able to help my firm reduce costs by over 28% by implementing SOP’s that allowed multiple different operations to be completed simultaneously. I have also developed strategies to decrease inefficacy and increase productivity by employing cost savings and quality improving methods across all divisions. I was able to do so by continuously monitoring all department operations to help them design a procedure that would work for that department.