Management for Business Excellence MSc

Find out more about our Management for Business Excellence taught Master's degree at Warwick

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P-H1SB

MSc

1 year full-time

29 September 2025

WMG (Warwick Manufacturing Group)

University of Warwick

Management for Business Excellence MSc is an innovative Master's degree with a focus on Quality Management, Continuous Improvement, and leadership. With an emphasis on challenge-based learning, this course will prepare you to become an effective leader, decision maker, and manager of excellence within any industry.

The framework for the Management for Business Excellence degree is the EFQM Excellence Model, a globally recognised model created to help organisations develop towards the achievement of sustainable excellence. The model was originally developed to increase the competitiveness of European businesses in response to global competition. It has now been adopted globally, and is instrumental in supporting thousands of businesses world-wide in their ‘journey to excellence’, helping them to manage change, improve performance, and develop a culture of innovation.

This course is applicable to any field of industry. It is suitable for people who want to be challenged in the way they think about effective management and the improvement of processes to optimise output quality. In WMG we achieve this through structured problem-solving and a dynamic learning environment through using case-studies to explore employer motivation and business culture.

Management for Business Excellence all about understanding how organisations can effectively work towards stakeholder-based goals; it takes a holistic look at organisations, the inter-relationships between departments within them, and how to optimise the use of available assets and resources. Typically students will have a background in engineering, business, management, finance, or economics, but MBE is open and beneficial to graduates from any academic discipline.

Designed to deliver a detailed understanding of the philosophies, strategies, processes and techniques that enable change and deliver business excellence, this course will provide you with a distinctly different learning experience. With a focus on critical autonomy, you will make active choices about what you wish to learn and how best to achieve your learning objectives; all this will be facilitated by our expert MBE course tutors.

Teamwork plays a central role throughout the course. By working collaboratively with your international colleagues, you’ll develop a rich, global perspective. Through classroom simulations, you’ll generate credible and practical solutions to real-business problems. Most importantly, you’ll learn to think critically about topics and issues that come to the fore; challenging views and growing both as an individual and as a leader of business.

This course has two components – a taught component accounting for two-thirds of your time and effort, and a research component accounting for one-third.

For the taught component, we blend synchronous and asynchronous lectures and seminars, with syndicate exercises, simulations, personal reflective practices, and case studies. The majority of modules are taught in small classes to facilitate and encourage interaction. Others occasionally practice large-scale lectures, which are then supported by small class seminar and group activities.

Through classroom simulations, you’ll generate credible and practical solutions to real-business problems. Most importantly you’ll learn to think critically about topics and issues that come to the fore, challenging views and growing both as an individual and as a practitioner of effective solutions to quality improvement opportunities.

Our module leaders have extensive industry experience. Guest speakers from industry also contribute regularly, bringing real-world insight into your learning experience.

In addition to your taught modules, you will undertake a major project as part of your Master's degree. This is nominally 600 hours (60 CATS points) of learning, mainly taking place during the Spring and Summer terms. You will be expected to engage regularly with your Project Supervisor and to provide progress updates and drafts of your work to an agreed schedule.

The typical intake for this course is around 55-60 students, divided into smaller teaching groups for most modules.

Module delivery patterns vary, but most will be delivered in a short learning block of up to 4 weeks, allowing your focus to be on one module at a time. Each module nominally accounts for 150 hours, which includes scheduled classroom time and online sessions as well as your independent study and assessments.

The Study, Professional and Analytical Skills (SPA) Module also consists of 150 hours of learning and is purposefully designed to meet the complex learning and professional needs of postgraduate students. The module is taught across the year, and is composed of three interlinked yet distinctive learning strands: Study Skills, Professional Skills, and Analytical Skills. SPA is a blended module, which runs asynchronously and synchronously with the student learning journey, providing a programme of carefully designed learning activities, materials, and resources.

This course uses a variety of assessment methods across modules. These may include reports (both topic based and reflective), essays, individual and group presentations, critical evaluation or commentary pieces, case study exercises, simulation reports, business or consultancy reports, online tests, and video presentations.

Assessments have been designed not only to assess your achievement in meeting the course learning outcomes in an academically sound manner, but also contribute to preparing you with the requisite competencies required for employment.

For the research component, you will undertake a major project. Project submission is likely to include both a written and a presentation element, accounting for 33% of your overall academic grade.

Reading lists

If you would like to view reading lists for current or previous cohorts of students, most departments have reading lists available through Warwick Library on the Talis Aspire platform.

You can search for reading lists by module title, code or convenor. Please see the modules tab of this page or the module catalogue.

Please note that some reading lists may have restricted access or be unavailable at certain times of year due to not yet being published. If you cannot access the reading list for a particular module, please check again later or contact the module’s host department.

Your timetable

Modules will be allocated to students at the end of the first week of term - you will then be able to view your individual module schedule for the rest of the year via the WMG module selection system.

Modules will include scheduled classroom time and online sessions as well as your independent study and assessments, and will usually be delivered within a 4 week timeframe. Occasional classes and study skills sessions may be held at weekends or in the evenings.

As a Master's student, you are expected to manage your own time appropriately. On average, you are expected to commit 38-40 hours of study each week, in order to successfully achieve your Master’s degree.

This is a full-time postgraduate course - undergraduate term dates do not apply. Whilst there are no holidays as such, there will be no teaching scheduled when the University is officially closed for staff, during the two weeks over Christmas and New Year.

2:1 undergraduate degree (or equivalent) in a range of subjects including IT, business, engineering or a science related discipline.

Candidates with a UK 2:2 (or equivalent) may be accepted upon demonstration of relevant professional experience.

• Band A
• IELTS overall score of 6.5, minimum component scores not below 6.0

Candidates with professional experience should include their CV with their application.

Core modules are required modules that all students will complete whilst on this programme. For Management for Business Excellence MBE), your core modules are:

Optional modules

One elective module should be chosen from the following list, allowing you the flexibility to tailor the course in line with your specific interests:

Find out more about this course on WMG’s website.