- Operations Management is increasingly being accepted as having a key strategic role for businesses. Firms must increasingly manage its operations to meet its corporate and strategic goals.
Task
Students should select an organization you work at or an organization which you are familiar with and have access to and work through the following questions relating to operations within the organisation. Students should write a report (using the headings below as a guide) discussing the operations of the organisation, and making recommendations for improvement.
The following are some suggested questions to consider under each heading – but these are not exhaustive topics (and you may discuss other things you see as being important should adopt a formal style and structure for your Management Report
Include an executive summary and conclusions and recommendations. Students should note that they do not need to look at an entire company but instead may decide to focus particular business unit or operation. For example you may want to look at a large international company – but only have access to one part of the organisation – this is perfectly acceptable.
Operations Strategy: Discuss the operations strategy of your chosen organisation. Does your chosen organisation have a clear operations strategy? How does the operations strategy support or complement the business strategy? How has the operations strategy developed and changed in recent years? If the organisation doesn’t have an operations strategy can you help them broadly define an operations strategy or give them guidance on what they should do to develop one?
Product & Service Design: Discuss the products and services offered by your chosen organisation. Do they target the same markets or do they have different offerings catering to different markets? What operations challenges does the product/service mix pose? Can you see evidence of effective screening processes? How good is the organisation at developing products and services? If appropriate discuss the product or service design process. Who else is involved in product and service design (e.g. suppliers, customers, retailers)? Do they measure the impact of design and new product development?
Process Design: Discuss the processes within your chosen organization. From your reading of the module materials and other background reading, consider whether or not alternative approaches might lead to improvements in the performance of the organisation.
Planning & Control: Outline the types of short and long term planning that are carried out in the organisation. Is demand dependent or independent? How appropriate is their approach to forecasting? How could they improve? Critically discuss the organisation’s approaches to scheduling, loading and sequencing where appropriate. If appropriate discuss capacity management. How does the organisation cope with fluctuations in demand? What alternatives might be open to them? Is technology used to support these activities? Do you think there is adequate feedback and control?
Innovation and improvement: How does the company encourage innovation? Is innovation something that is managed? Outline some of the tools for improvement that you would recommend as being appropriate for your organisation and explain how they could be implemented. Would you say the organisation is lean or agile?
Supply Chain: Outline the supply chain of the organisation (or part of it), including purchasing, physical distribution management and materials management. How is IT used to supply chain management? Outline how the supply chain might be improved.
Quality Management: Discuss the costs of quality as they apply in your chosen organisation. How are quality problems diagnosed? How could the company improve their approach to quality management? Does the organisation have a formal quality system? Would this be appropriate?
Instructions for the Management Report:
Your report (not exceeding 4000 words) should incorporate the following:
(a) Executive Summary (5%) 200-300 words, not to be included in the word count.
(b) Introduction (10%) 300-350 words
You should clearly identify any assumptions you make for your company, such as the business it is in, size of operation, competitor(s), home country nationality, and other relevant information you deemed useful.
(c) Main Body (65%) 3000-3300 words
You should identify suitable frameworks or models to use in the report and be organised under
appropriate sub-headings on the requirements suggested above of the assignment questions. (d) Recommendations and Conclusion (10%) 300-350 words
Direct the end of your report to the Group CEO to convince him of your proposed Operations Management strategies, policies programmes and practices for the organisation.
(e) References (10%)
