Advanced Research Project

Goal(s)

This Unit is mandatory for Master Students in Industrial Engineering in both specialties Supply Chain and Product development. It is also open to students studying in final fall semester of School of Industrial Engineering. The Advanced Research project is linked with the lecture Researching Operations Management and Design (2.5 ECTS credits). Students have to follow both.
OBJECTIVE
This exercise aims to train students to formulate and write a research proposal. Writing a research proposal is a complex and important task required before starting research project.
A research proposal is a document written by a researcher that provides a detailed description of the proposed program. Research proposals contain extensive literature reviews and must offer convincing support of need for the research study being proposed by identifying the gaps that are in the literature.
A research proposal is intended to convince others that you have a worthwhile research project and that you have the competence and the plan to complete it.
Work load is about 80 hours

Content(s)

PROJECT ORGANIZATION.
Students are expected to write a research proposal (2000 words ) on the subject they have chosen to address.
• For Master students : Research proposal is related for their master thesis.
• For students in “Parcours recherche” : Research proposal is built from a topic defined by a senior researcher
As each student is working under the direction of a senior researcher, the student is tasked with planning the meetings with their own directors. Strategic help can be provided by professor in charge of the course and during the “researching operations management” course.
Three intermediate deliverables are structured to guide students through the proposal writing process.
DELIVERABLE 1: LITERATURE RESEARCH AND IDENTIFICATION [6TH NOVEMBER]
Each research project is based on previous work, typically provided by research director. This can be the starting point of the literature review. Students have to develop their own collection of relevant papers using databases (sciencedirect, web of knowledge, scorpus, googlescholar, Gael, biblio STIC CNRS)
A document presenting these researches and their organization will be the deliverable 1. It will be uploaded in Chamillo in pdf format before 6 November 2012 at 6 pm
Name your file as follow: D1-yourfamilyname.pdf Workload ~10h
D2 - PAPER SELECTION AND READING - [30TH NOVEMBER]
Use the paper summary template in Chamillo (repository documents) and present at least six papers related to your research topic. These paper summaries may form the basis for your critical literature review for future projects, so time and care should be spent to make these as clear as possible.
Document D2 will be uploaded in Chamillo in pdf format before 30 November 2012 at 6 pm
Name your file as follow: D2-yourfamilyname.pdf Workload ~30h
D3 – LITERATURE ORGANIZATION [22 DECEMBER]
Students will propose a map, a model, a table, a scheme, or graph presenting a synthetic vision of their literature review, organizing and linking papers, key concept, key questions, and author’s contribution (1 A4 or A3). As with any generated document, an explanation of the figure or table should be at least as long as the figure and table itself (1page of explanation of how to read the document). Again, you will likely reuse this document in your future research, so care should be given to do it right.
Document D3 will be uploaded in Chamillo in pdf format before 22 December at 6 pm
Name your file as follow : D2-yourfamilyname.pdf Workload ~10h
DF- STRUCTURE OF A RESEARCH PROPOSAL (FINAL DELIVERABLE) – [28 JANUARY]
Your research proposal has to answer three big questions:
• What research project will you undertake? (Objective)
• Why is important to know that thing? (Relevance)
• How will you proceed to make that research? (Plan and methods)
The research proposal of 2000 words will use the presented structure (see below)
Document DF will be uploaded in Chamillo in pdf format before 28 January at 6 pm
Name your file as follow : DF-yourfamilyname.pdf Workload ~30h

Choosing the "Advanced Research Project" implies following the compulsory course "Researching Operations Management and Design".

The literature review of the Advanced Research Project is linked to the "Researching Operations Management and Design" course.

It is an educational exercise to enable students to learn about the process of defining a research project.