Reflective Application Assignment on Customer Value and Operations Strategy

Overview of the Company and Strategy

Individual Assignment (Individual, 20%) We've called this a "Reflective Application Assignment" with the intention that your deliverable will be based on applying the ideas and concepts we're discussing in the course to your own work environment, rather than to someone else's (in the form of a business case).

 

The assignment is asking you to apply the idea of customer value to your own department or process in your organization, to help you explain the part that you play in achieving the strategy or mission of your overall organization.

 

Your assignment should be a response to the questions that follow. It should be a maximum of 1250 words and must follow the most recent APA style.

 

Provide an overview of the company in which you work, and describe the strategy of the overall organization using Porter's Generic Competitive Strategies; if you belong to a public sector organization, explain your mission or mandate.

 

Describe your part of the organization; what department or process in the organization are you responsible for?

 

Please do not explain your role; instead, you will describe your part as inputs, processes, and outputs (be precise!) Who are the customers of your part of the organization? Please note that customers are those who use the output of the process, for which you are responsible.

 

Your "customer" doesn't have to be the final end-user of your product or service of your overall organization. Your customer might be an external user if your part of the organization is the final step in the process or if you're in the customer-facing part of the organization. Alternatively, your customer might be internal if you provide a service or product inside your organization What do the customers of your part of the organization value?

 

Describe your customer values as the five performance objectives. Using the Four Perspective Model, discuss the current operations strategy of your organization (and the operations strategy for your selected if it is different from the overall organization strategy). Using the models you have learned in the course, discuss areas for improvement.

Draw the processes involved in transforming inputs into outputs and assess the key relevant process variables, which may include takt time, throughput time, capacity, bottleneck…etc.

 

Define specific areas for improvements. If, for some reason, you are unable to complete this assignment using your current or recent organization, please contact your instructors to have a business case which you can use to answer the same questions.

 

It won't be as interesting for either of us, though... When we mark this assignment, we will be looking for evidence that you've understood the course concepts and you are able to apply these concepts to make a logical, coherent argument The assignment is worth 20 % of your total grade.

 

You will be given a detailed rubric prior to submission.

 

The report should be a maximum of 1250 words and must follow the most recent APA style.

 

You will submit your report at the end of Week 5 (Dec 12th).