Your summative assessment for this module takes the form of an essaу in 2500 words. This is an individual assignment. You must choose an organisation or business which is either an automotive comрany (manufacturing industry) or a hosрital (service sector). You need to produce an essay elaborating on the key operation, logistics and supply chain management issues faced by the operations and supply chain manager(s) in this particular organisation / business.
You can collect data from resources like websites, books, journal articles and grey reports. Some case studies are available to help you collect required data. It makes sense to select a company where you work, have worked or know people who work there.
By focusing on the operational and supply chain issues, you should seek to identify and clarify how the operation functions and supports the market that it serves. What service delivery system (s) or manufacturing process (es) does it use? What infrastructure does it use to manage these delivery systems? And how, together, do these support the market (s) that it serves? A critical, detailed and relevant analysis should be made of the various components.
Based on your analysis, you are expected to make recommendations about how the business can improve its performance. Consider triple bottom line – described as the incorporation of economic, environmental and social factors as the three dimensions of sustainability in business practice – in your analysis.
As it might be impossible to analyse all the areas of operations, logistics and supply chain management, you
should also decide which area (s) to cover in your discussion. Therefore, choose two of the following areas in managing operations, logistics and supply chain.
• New product/ service development and process
• Managing quality
• Location and Layout
• Managing people in operation and supply chains
• Logistics mix: Channels, networks, transportation, managing inventory and capacity
• Managing business relationships in supply chains
• JIT and Lean
To conduct writing the essay, students need to read and refer to core text books and academic journals as well as source of their data collection (mentioned before).
The essay will be assessed according to the following criteria:
Introduction (10%)
Critical review of relevant Operation, Logistics and Supply Chain Management theories (30%)
Analytic discussion with relevant and similar example(s) and applying appropriate solutions of Operations Management (30%)
Conclusion and recommendation (20%)
Clarity of writing, essay structure, correct referencing (10%)
MUST USE HARVARD REFERENCING