Investigating Operations Management Techniques in Engineering and Non-Engineering Industries

The assignment is an opportunity for you to investigate how operations management techniques are used in practice, especially in engineering companies, and also its wider applications in other non-engineering industries such as public sector and IT. In addition to the lecture materials, students are expected to carry out further literature reading through books, journals and the internet.

Students should select an organisation (from the given choices below) and work through the some suggested headings related to operations within that organisation. Below 7 areas of investigation are given, and students should discuss at least 4 of them, plus one extra (5th) area which can be your own choice if you want to.

Based on the areas of investigation that you chose, students should write a report to discuss the operations of the chosen organisation, and make recommendations for future improvement where appropriate.

Some questions are given in each investigation area as a guide. These are only suggestions to help you. Depending on the research materials you can find, you may also discuss other issues if they are relevant. The report should follow this structure:

Executive summary, Content page, Introduction, Discussion of each chosen area with recommendations, and a final conclusion. Two approaches you may consider using - either discuss the company as a whole, or identify a specific group within that company. Where appropriate, explore if their current operations can be made more efficient by using modern technology. For example, Sony is a mult-billion company which has many divisions including Electronics, Music, IT, Entertainment etc As the quality of your final report depends on what materials you can find, so it is very important that you will spend a reasonable amount of time/effort to do some research before you decide which company/industry you want to investigate.

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?

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?

Traceability has been raised many times in the headline news recently because of the sub-standard quality of steel and airbags used by various manufacturers. In yourchosen company, discuss if they are using the right technology to trace the ‘whereused’ of their products. Have they had any incidents in recent years which required recalling their products because of safety or other issues? Comment if their traceabiliy procedures have exposed some gaps which can be imporoved, e.g. using cloud, RFID etc.

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?

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?

Where appropriate, outline the supply chain of the organisation, including purchasing, physical distribution management and materials management. How is IT used to helptheir supply chain management? Outline how the supply chain might be improved.

Competition and Benchmarking

How competitive the company is at present? Who are their competitors? Are they in a good position to remain their competitiveness amongst their competitors? Are they ready for future expansion? Do they benchmark themselves against their competitors, in what way?

Have the students explained their approach to gathering information? Have they gathered appropriate information and presented it clearly? Have they documented the operations of the organisation? Have they made the correct references?

Have the students linked what they saw in the organisation with the theory covered in classes? Have they used appropriate models, tools, frameworks to help in their analysis? Have they argued a clear case and linked theory and practice? References?

Are conclusions and recommendations linked to the body of the report – substantiated and cross-referenced?

Have the students demonstrated extra effort in any particular areas e.g. presentation, attention to details, use of tables, writing style