- Background
Operations Management (OM) is an important aspect of business (Slack et al, 2013;
Greasley, 2013; Patton et al, 2011). Both service and manufacturing organisations use OM to
ensure they are competitive and assist in providing and maintaining good levels of customer
service (Johnson et al, 2012). Developing a system of an organisations operation can be
advantageous both for both the customer and organisation (Bamford and Forrester, 2010).
Subsequently, once a system has been developed and understood it should be possible to
determine why the system works well, or not well, and to recommend possible production
related improvements that will assist both parties concerned.
Task
In this assignment analyse a production system (service or manufacturing based) with which
you are familiar; a shop, restaurant, transport system, doctor’s surgery are all possible
examples. Your tutor will give some guidance on your choice of organisation/case study.
Your assignment should address the following questions:
1. Critically appraise how well the inventories and/or assets within the production
system are currently managed.
2. Provide a detailed illustration of the key operations involved within your chosen
production system presenting a logical operational flow.
3. From the illustration in point two, identify two points where the organisation’s
delivery system may fail to align its operational performance measures, clearly
demonstrating your reasoning and understanding behind this.
4. Discuss how a lean approach could be utilised in the production system to potentially
reduce the failings discussed in point three.
5. Identify three key findings discussing the extent to which the lean approach chosen
may assist the production system with aligning its operational performance measures.
Format -
Your submission should be in a report format, being clearly structured using headings, sub-
headings etc. It is not necessary to include an executive summary at the beginning of the
report. Your submission should be presented using Times New Roman (TNR) 12 font, 1.5
line spacing, and it should be approximately 3,000 (+/- 10%) words in length. Your word
count is from the introduction to the end of the conclusion section.
You must endeavour to use theory explicitly at all stages, but do not spend too much time
describing a theory. While you must be explicit about the theories, models, techniques etc.
that you use, you can assume that the reader is familiar with them. What the reader requires is
evidence of your ability to understand and apply the theory, and learn from in order to
support the development of your findings and/or ideas.
