The Masters in Procurement and Supply Chain (MPSM) at BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD) of BRAC University is a two-year specialized program, one of its kind in Bangladesh, offered since 2012. Procurement and supply chain management are high-stake, complex, sophisticated functions, particularly for governments and large non-state entities including businesses. The fast-growing economy and ever-expanding scope of organizational functions mean that procurement and supply chain management is becoming even more critical. MPSM has been designed to meet this critical need—developing the capabilities of professionals to successfully take on important roles in procurement and supply chain management across the public and private sectors in Bangladesh and beyond. MPSM at BIGD follows an international standard of education, closely aligned with the curriculum of the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply (CIPS), the leading global program in this field.
MPSM is designed to equip professionals with the necessary knowledge and skills to succeed in procurement and supply management-related careers, offering an interdisciplinary approach to studying procurement and supply management with a solid grounding in the theoretical and practical aspects of procurement and supply management. MPSM aims to:
Procurement and supply management is an expertise relevant to any organization; skilled professionals in this field are sought after, particularly by large organizations to manage their complex procurement and supply functions. As MPSM is a postgraduate professional degree program, most of the students are professionals working with the government as well as non-government organizations. MPSM helps them sharpen their skills and expertise to advance their careers. But many students are fresh graduates or early-career professionals who are planning to change their career paths. These groups are also finding employment in a wide range of organizations—private corporations, non-profits, educational institutes, and international organizations.
MDS students can apply for internship and short-term placements, which are frequently advertised on the BIGD website.
Students have the option to pursue another master’s degree if they want to specialize in a specific field of procurement and supply management e.g., logistics and banking. They can also pursue an MBA.
The program is structured in two streams -- Capstone and Thesis. The first stream consists of foundation, core and elective courses and finishes off with a capstone integrative course. The Thesis stream has the same structure of foundation, core and elective courses, but is finished off with a dissertation after a non-credit research methodology course.
The foundation courses are designed to build a solid understanding of the most fundamental concepts of procurement and supply–planning, sourcing, negotiating, measuring performance and managing relationships. The core courses focus on developing management and leadership skills relevant to procurement and supply such as strategic management, risk management, change management and performance improvement. The elective courses allow the students to pursue their specific interest areas through courses such as Marketing for Purchasers, the Machinery of Government and Sustainable Procurement.
The capstone course offers an opportunity to the students to apply their learning to a real-world situation. The course is project-based, which also allows students to develop investigative, analytical and communication skills, including the use of secondary and, if required, primary research, where appropriate.
In the Thesis stream, students are provided with the opportunity to write a dissertation, based on original research. BIGD follows a rigorous process to select, support and assess the dissertation.
Course Curriculum
MPSM students are required to achieve a total of 48 credits to graduate. The program is structured in two-stream options – with and without dissertation.
Stream 1: Without Dissertation
Foundation Courses (15 credits)
PSM 501: Sourcing and Procurement
This course will help students to apply a set of appropriate tools and techniques to assess sourcing options available to organisations when procuring goods, services or works from external suppliers. This course identifies sound approaches to sourcing activities that assess the commercial and technical capabilities of organisations to help achieve the right choice of supplier.
PSM 502: Negotiation and Contracts in Supply Chain Management
This course will help students to identify approaches for achieving negotiated agreements with external organisations, and recognise the use of legal terms that should regulate commercial agreements. The creation of formalised agreements is a critical part of the work of personnel in procurement and supply. This course analyses approaches to the negotiation of agreements made with external parties and the formation of legally binding contracts. This course also equips students for negotiating with external parties after implementation of a contract, in order to resolve conflicts regarding performance issues, costs, timing and quality of supplies.
PSM 503: Performance Measures for Supply Chain Management
This course will help students to measure the effectiveness of the supply chain and its contribution to the competitiveness of the organisation. By the end of this course, students will be able to apply a range of measurement techniques in order to monitor the performance of suppliers at organisational, functional and individual levels, how they perform financially against targets, compliance to contract/specification, and potential risks that they may present.
PSM 504: Managing Purchasing and Supply Relationships
This course will enable students to focus on developing and managing effective relationships, old and new, within the supply chain. Students will be able to review and develop existing relationships and identify opportunities for establishing new relationships that will enhance the performance of the supply chain, while exploring the benefits and risks of establishing such relationships.
PSM 505: Supply Chain Flow Planning and Network Planning
This course is designed to enable students to apply the fundamental principles of purchasing and supply in a variety of different contexts, including a range of private sector organisations, including multinationals and small/medium sized enterprises (SMEs), plus the public sector; national and local government; and the third sector. Students will be able to consider the procurement cycle as it applies to a diverse range to purchased products and services including raw materials, commodities, components, utilities and services, both domestically and in an international context.
Core Courses (15 credits)
PSM 521: Management in the Purchasing Function
This course designed to enable students to manage their own area of responsibility within an organisation’s internal supply chain, in line with the overall strategic business plan and the operational plan for the purchasing function. Students should be able to implement operational plans for their own area of responsibility to achieve objectives set out in their plan. In doing so they should be able to employ a range of resources, including human, physical and financial, and manage and delegate tasks effectively.
PSM 522: Risk Management and Supply Chain Vulnerability
This course enables students to undertake risk analysis and a variety of risk assessments relating to different aspects of purchasing and supply and to implement a range of appropriate risk management tools and techniques. Students will use a variety of risk assessment tools and techniques designed to provide a detailed analysis of supply chain situations, including legal, corporate social responsibility (CSR), ethical, health and safety, financial, international, innovation and a variety of other potential risk scenarios. The scope covers both the proactive identification and avoidance of risk, as well as provision for post-event recovery initiatives.
PSM 523: Improving Supply Chain Performance
This unit is designed to enable students to use a range of techniques and strategies to develop and improve supplier performance in order to achieve competitiveness, efficiency and profitability within the supply chain. By the end of this unit, students will be able to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of supply chain performance. They will be able to identify innovative development of systems to improve the performance of the supply chain, and make justifiable recommendations for implementation in order to aid the effectiveness of the supply chain.
PSM 524: Leading and Influencing in Purchasing
This course is designed to develop students’ leadership skills to enable them to lead, influence and provide direction to stakeholders within the supply chain. Students should be able to operate at a strategic level. They should be able to lead in their defined area or part of the organisation and will be expected to motivate and support supply chain members and stakeholders in achieving objectives and success. Students will be expected to lead in a variety of situations and to ensure that they maintain the balance of power required to achieve success. They should be able to demonstrate effective leadership in a variety of contexts, including through change, adversity, conflict and success, in order to maximise the potential of the organisation.
PSM 525: Strategic Supply Chain Management
This Course will help students with an understanding of strategic aspects of supply chain management. Students will analyse the supply chain to identify where value is added within it, identifying where and how strategic competitive advantage can be achieved. Students will be able to propose a range of innovative proposals which will allow supply chain stakeholders to effectively interact and contribute towards developing and exploiting opportunities to grow and expand the business, through new product and service development, innovation, diversification and differentiation strategies.
Elective courses (12 Credits)
PSM-601: Marketing for Purchasers
This course is designed to provide students with an appreciation of the basic principles of marketing so they can interact more effectively with marketing colleagues within their organisation. It will help students to understand marketing terminology and to identify ways that they can contribute more effectively towards their organisation’s marketing efforts.
PSM-602: Storage and Distribution
This course aims to identify the major areas of concern in effectively managing storage and distribution throughout the supply chain. It is essential that the management of inventory, storage, distribution and general logistics are coordinated, both upstream and downstream, in order to reduce lead times, provide agility and reduce unnecessary costs. In order for this to happen it is essential that relationships, both internally and externally, are honed to the appropriate level.
PSM-603: Supply Chain Operational Management
This course is designed to enable those who work in purchasing to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of an organisation’s operations. Students should be able to understand how operations staff add value to its inputs through the effective management of production and delivery. Operations staff are likely to be the most important internal customers for purchasing and supply chain managers.
PSM-604: The Machinery of Government
This course seeks to explore the drivers and decision makers of central and local government and the impact these have upon the public sector procurement function. This unit will also include consideration of the background to current public procurement policy and procedures, the regulatory frameworks and rules relating to procurement practice and the role of elected representatives and officials in making significant procurement decisions. An understanding of government policy, regulations and government initiatives such as the efficiency agenda, social agenda and sustainability drivers will be imperative to the success of any candidate.
PSM-605: Contracting in the Public Sector
This course highlights the differences in contracting and regulatory requirements within the public sector environment. It is designed to provide students with the knowledge and understanding to analyse concepts underlying the contracting process, including markets, transparency, competition, relationships and trust in public sector procurement.
PSM-606: Sustainable Procurement
This course is designed to provide students with a working knowledge of sustainable procurement: what it is, how it aligns with overall organisational strategies, policies and operations and how to recognise, apply and successfully manage sustainable procurement activities to achieve future improvements and benefits and mitigate risk. Through the exploration and evaluation of external and internal sustainability factors, drivers, barriers and trade-offs, students will cover a wide range of situations across sectors.
PSM-607: Advanced Project Management
This course will help students to develop knowledge of the principles, practices and techniques vital to the successful leadership and commercial management of projects, with a particular emphasis on the role of the purchasing and supply chain professional.
PSM-608: Finance for Purchasers
This unit is designed to provide students with an understanding of strategic aspects of finance in relation to the decision-making process and detailed analysis necessary to deliver effective procurement. Students will understand how to navigate around the world of finance in an effective and efficient manner so they can identify the where, when, how, and what a professional purchaser needs, in order to use and interpret the key financial models and tools required to deliver robust and sustainable procurement solutions.
PSM-609: Strategic Public Sector Program Management
This course provides a strategic overview of how the public sector manages major programs and projects. Students will have a critical appreciation of managing major project risks, the importance of knowledge management as a culture not a process, and strategic supplier communications, in particular relating to Public private partnerships (PPP) and Private finance initiative (PFI) projects and those projects with high risk ratings. There is a particular focus upon the critical analysis of funding methods and financial models, and the selection of program and project management techniques.
PSM-610: Public Sector Stakeholders and Governance
The focus of this course is on the strategic management of key and critical stakeholders of the public sector. It provides tools and techniques for understanding communication, collaboration and conflict management strategies. The course also examines the significance of changing social and political agendas, such as corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the small medium enterprises (SME) agenda, for organisational procurement and processes.
Capstone Integrative Course resulting in a Report/Practicum (6 Credits)
PSM-665: Supply Chain Management in Practice – Report/Practicum
This course is designed to help students to gain a deeper understanding of supply chain theory and practice by examining how particular theories relate to real-world situations or how particular theories offer advantages over others. The Course is project based and will require the submission of a Report/ Practicum, where the student will also develop investigative, analytical and communication skills, including the use of secondary and, if required, primary research where appropriate. The Report/ Practicum will be around 3000-4000 words.
Stream 2: With Dissertation
The outline of stream 2 is nearly identical to stream 1, with the capstone report replaced with a dissertation and accompanied by a non-credit research methodology course.
5 Foundation courses (15 Credits)
5 Core courses (15 Credits)
4 Elective courses (12 Credits)
Research Methodology course (Non-credit)
PSM- 666: Research Methodology (non-credit)
This course will introduce students to the basic elements and processes of research. The aim is to develop research skills that can be applied in subsequent practice, independent study projects and dissertation writing. Topics include preparing a research proposal, problem formulation, research design, data collection methods and analysis, and hypothesis testing.
Dissertation (6 Credits)
PSM- 667: Dissertation (6 credits)
Students will be asked to identify possible topics for their dissertation and in the final semester, the students will collect, collate and analyse data, and complete a dissertation consisting of 10,000-12,000 words.
The Master of Procurement and Supply Management (MPSM) program at BRAC University provides students with access to a range of facilities and resources to support their academic and professional development.