Operations, Logistics, and Supply Chain Management: Essay Guidelines

1. Knowledge outcome – You will be able to develop your understandings of operations, logistics and SCM in organisations and how these contribute to organisational success.

2. Intellectual /transferable skills outcome – You will be able to consider a complex scenario related to operations, logistics and SCM and apply quantitative or qualitative techniques to contribute to its solution.

Your summative assessment for this module takes the form of an essay in 2500 words. This is an individual assignment. You must choose an organisation or business like an automotive company (manufacturing industry) or a hospital (service sector). You are not supposed to choose any company which we are dealing with in seminars like Arnold Palmer hospital or Frito Lay.

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.  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 lists in managing operations, logistics and supply chain.

• New product/ service development and process

• Managing quality (I choose this one)

• Location and Layout  (I choose this one)

• 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 textbooks and academic journals as well as source of their data collection (mentioned before).

Introduction (10%)

Review of relevant Operation, Logistics and Supply Chain Management theories (30%);

Critical analytic discussion with relevant and similar example(s) and applying appropriate solutions of Operations Management (30%);

• Selected business/ organisation

• Two selected areas of Operations and Supply Chain Management

• Theories and techniques that should be applied

• Potential areas of improvement which need to be reviewed critically