Cyri is quite experienced as an entrepreneur and it was very useful to gain insights from not only him, but various guest speakers and entrepreneurs that he brought into the class. He is also very in touch with local resources (Small Business BC, ARLO at BCIT, and more), which gave us a valuable insight into where we could go to get assistance with starting up a business.

Over the duration of the course, we were to do various projects around a business venture of our choice. My team decided that it would be interesting to see what would be involved in creating a franchise for something that is of constant demand, and chose the food industry, and more specifically, De Dutch. De Dutch is a pancake house that has locations all over British Columbia and had a lot of start-up financial data readily available. While choosing something like a franchise instead of a full-on start-up might seem like the “easy way out”, we realized we had to differentiate it somehow, so we looked at the possibility of implementing core Operations Management concepts further into the business as well as expanding menu language options and potentially even cuisine.

At the end of the course, we participated in an event called Grizzly’s Den (similar to Dragon’s Den, on TV) where we did an elevator pitch (3 minutes maximum, to pitch your business venture) to a panel of real entrepreneurs and angel investors. It was a bit nerve racking going up there, but it was quite a valuable experience! I enjoyed it because I got to understand what kinds of questions and concerns investors might have about a new start-up – not just in terms of our franchise, but there was a lot to be learned from how the judges reacted to the other elevator pitches that were presented that day.

So hats off to Cyri. I think the course was unique in that he attempted to make it a bit more dynamic and “on the fly” by implementing leading edge material as the course went on. This is not something that is easy to do, but there was definitely value in teaching the course that way.

Hello, and welcome to my e-Portfolio!   My name is Jeff Malcolm, and I am a second-year student at BCIT enrolled in the Business Operations Management Technology program.   I hope to pursue a career in operations in manufacturing or distribution. 

Over the summer and winter breaks in 2010, I worked at Garibaldi Glass, Inc., a local plate glass manufacturing company. During the summer, I worked in production scheduling, and over the winter I assisted Garibaldi in their move to a new facility and helped get them started on a 5S shadowboard concept that they were hoping to implement. Next week, I will begin my 4th term Directed Studies project at Garibaldi where my partner, Nadia Graham, and I will be attempting to reduce the paper usage in the order cycle by 90%.

In my blog you will find various samples of my work at BCIT as well as some personal information which will give you an idea of what my academic strengths and personal interests are. This e-Portfolio itself is a BCIT assignment for BSYS 1000 and you can find the instructions for this assignment here.

** Update: I realize that the content on this e-Portfolio is a bit out of date. I will be updating it soon with samples of what I have learned and worked on at BCIT since the blog was originally created.

Enjoy!

During the Spring 2010 term, we were asked to use Microsoft Access 2007 to create a database to manage skating lessons, instructors, students, students’ progress throughout various levels, and much more.  Each level requires that a student pass a variety of skills.  Just for fun,we used the names of Vancouver Canucks players for the students.  This project taught us how to properly set up relationships between various fields as well as build forms, reports, queries, switchboards, and more.  The image above displays one of many screens in the database – this screen is meant for selecting a student and seeing which levels he/she has completed, as well as how much revenue has been generated by that student, and how many levels have been attended.

Information on the project requirements can be found here.

You may click the following download icon to take a look at the Microsoft Access database, and you may also read the documentation in PDF format here.

Please note: When you download the database, you will receive a .DOCX (Microsoft Word format file) instead of the expected .ACCDB (Microsoft Access format).  Please rename the file extension to .accdb when reading it.  This blog has security settings which do not allow an .accdb file to be upload, so the file extension had to be changed.

For Marketing 1102, we were asked to do a case study on New Brunswick brewery Moosehead, and to find ways for it to penetrate the Quebec beer market.  You can download the case study below!

In our BSYS1000 course, we were asked to create a business model with various requirements which can be viewed here.

We decided to create a model based on first-term Operations Management courses.  The user of this model is assumed to be the lucky parent of an Operations Management student who will be rewarded based on his/her grades.  The parent is to periodically deposit a certain amount of money into an investment for the student, for a period of 10 years.  This allows the student to see how much money he/she will have earned in 10 years, based on grades which can be entered manually.  You may download the model by clicking on the link below.

Because BCIT is so team-oriented, one of the first projects we had to do as a team was design a Team Charter.  The purpose of a team charter is to set expectations and ground rules within a group of people that are working together.  This helps direct all members’ behaviour in a positive direction with the end result being an efficient team that works well together.  A lot of the content in a team charter may seem like common sense to some, but it’s crucial to document that content so that everyone agrees to it, and so it can be referred to in the future.  Above is an image from our Team Charter, and below, you will find a button to download it.

This project was one of the more challenging group projects we have endured, but it turned out very well.  A Terms of Reference is a contract that is designed to define the scope, and various other details, of a project that is being planned.  This is especially important in Operations Management.  It allows the project management team and the client to come to an agreement about these details before the project is started so that everything is clearly outlined and the expectations are clear to both parties.  We were given a case study which had to be picked apart carefully and then used to create this Terms of Reference.  Above is an image of our Terms of Reference project, and below, you will find a download link.

In Marketing 1102, we were asked to do a case study on a fictional wall coverings manufacturer called Canty International.  The general idea of the study was to design a pricing strategy for a new product which they created specifically for a large-scale hotel chain, but with the intent of continuing to offer the product to other customers afterwards.   Above is an image of the cover page, and at the bottom of this post is a link which allows you to download the case study.  Keep in mind that this is only the second case study we have done, so we are still learning, but we feel that we are on the right track!

For our BSYS1000 class, we had to design a PowerPoint presentation on why we chose BCIT to further our education.  This was a great project as it gave us the knowledge that we needed to create effective PowerPoint presentations for the rest of our courses.  At this point, that knowledge has become extremely valuable, and I’m sure we will be using PowerPoint for quite a long time.  Part of the assignment was to convert the PowerPoint presentation into YouTube format to be viewable online – I have embedded the YouTube video in this post so that you can see it right away!

In BSYS1000 we are now learning how to use Microsoft Excel 2007.  I have had quite a lot of experience with Excel, both through personal use as well as having a father who taught Excel courses at BCIT in the past, so I am quite familiar with how to use its functions.  I am still learning a lot of new techniques and functions though, so I look forward to the rest of the material that we will be covering.  Below is a recent lab that involved building a spreadsheet that calculates various aspects of a mortgage such as interest, principle, monthly payments, and so on.  Above is an image of this spreadsheet.