The purpose of this paper is to present the main achievements and experiences coming from an international teaching project. The aim of the International Operations Management (IOM) Project is to promote the internationalization of Operations Management, by jointly developing a programme of broad and enduring cooperation among Asian and European higher education institutions.
This objective has been pursued by fostering the cooperation in the field of higher education among three Chinese, an Italian and a Spanish university with the vision of creating a stable partnership network, based on a new didactical framework. As consequence, in a long term perspective, this common training background is expectet to contribute to the future improvement of economic, industrial and business relations between Europe and Asia based on the common understanding of their business processes.
The specific objective of the action is to integrate the current didactic offer of academic undergraduate, postgraduate and PhD courses with new didactic modules related to the theme of International Operations Management. The curriculum deals with five fundamental entrepreneurial processes: new product development, sourcing, manufacturing, distribution and networked business transactions. They were reviewed according to the current demand of skilled professionals oriented to a global perspective.
The IOM project has been structured in three macro phases:
1. Design of training plan and development of training modules: At this first stage, the training plan definition was made as well as the teaching exchange programme planning. Then, teaching materials for the five academic modules was developed. The training material used during the implementation phase (theoretical handling, exercises, case-studies, auto-assessment tools, etc.) is available in electronic format, through CDs and downloadable trough the project’s didactical platform.
2. Refinement of training modules and insertion in existing/new courses: At this stage, the five new modules and the related training material were refined in order to deliver a consistent and relevant final version of the overall training framework. One strategy to make it was the creation of pilot courses based on the topics developed in the five new modules. Pilot courses were intended to act as testing cases for developed contents in order to get initial student’s feedback about them. All the collected information was used to improve and release the final version that has been employed in official courses.
3. Dissemination and exploitation of project results: A web site has been developed to allow an efficient and effective dissemination of the project.

Finally, the IOM project has enabled:
- Strengthening of the existing EU-Asia partnership network and the development of new ones, creating a common basis for courses based on a coherent exchange of know-how on innovative topics.
- The formative offer increase in European and Asian higher education institutions, in order to get them more in line with the global market evolution and to allow them to form students enabled to meet the requirements of labour market.
- Defining a collaborative environment even though the cultural and language differences where a stable partnership network, based on a new didactical framework, was created.
- Deploying an IT architecture supporting both IOM's internal and external procedures and dealing with highly heterogeneous environments.