Assignment
EITHER
A. Practical application of concepts in a local organisation
• You are required to analyse and evaluate a key aspect of operations management covered in this subject, in either your own organisation or another business with which you are familiar. Note that if you are studying a specific stream in the BBA, such as tourism and hospitality, then this is an opportunity to apply operations management concepts to organisations and processes relevant to that stream. The key aspect of operations management could be an operational issue or problem based on a concept discussed in any of the ten topics of the subject e.g. inventory management, capacity planning, TQM, project management, lean synchronization, quality, improvement, and so on. The purpose of this analysis and evaluation is to: obtain details about the problem or issue; prepare a brief analysis of the problem using the relevant principles; and write a report with recommendations for improvement where possible. Your report should be brief, well written and presented, and capable of being given to the manager of the business as a serious recommendation for change. In your assignment report, you should provide the following information:
• Brief details of the company and the particular operations problem. Include reasons why the problem or issue is important to investigate. Its impact on the organisation’s processes could be demonstrated using a process flow chart or similar diagram to show the functional relationships.
? More specific details of the operational issue or problem that needs to be addressed. For example, this might include:
- key objectives and goals, success factors and performance measures for the issue in question
- opportunities or implications for changes to the way the problem is being managed now
- any critical resource implications or constraints
- critical operations issues affecting the problem such as process technologies, staffing, costs, etc.
? Your analysis of the problem using a concept covered in the subject.
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203OPER Operations 2 Subject Overview
? Your recommendations for improving the problem including comparisons of your recommendations against the current system, and details of changes needed to correct or improve the problem. Bear in mind that your recommendations should be potentially cost effective i.e. you must argue the changes from the point of view of their potential to improve cost, quality, output, productivity etc. (For example, do not just provide a wish list of recommendations that would be too costly or impractical to implement.)
? Make sure that you provide clear references to the concept(s) that you cover in your report so that the assignment examiner can verify your reasoning. To do this effectively, you should (correctly) cite the textbook where you refer to the concepts, and cite any other sources of information such as any reading from the supplied articles, or from the Internet.
• [Note that you may feel that the problem or operational issue is currently well managed and there is little that you can say about improvement. In this case, you should justify why you believe that the problem or issue is well managed and use the textbook concepts to support your reasoning.]