Key Operations, Logistics, and Supply Chain Management Issues in an Organization

Selected Organization/Business

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

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.

Individual essay : this is an individual assignment as an essay in You must choose an organisation or business like an automotive company (in manufacturing industry) or a hospital (in 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 list 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:

Review of relevant Operation, Logistics and Supply Chain Management theories

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

Conclusion and recommendation

Clarity of writing, essay structure, correct referencing

You should write down an essay plan to introduce  

-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

You should email the essay plan to your seminar tutor in week 4. You can book an appointment with your seminar tutor in week 7 (reading week) to receive individual feedback and discuss your essay plan.

How will we support you with your assessment?

• Two dedicated seminars in week three and ten
• Formative feedback on case studies in seminar
• Formative assessment: writing an essay plan in week 4
• Links to the assessment throughout your seminars and team-building session specifically
• Coursework tutorials with your seminar tutor during reading week and revision week

For students who are offered a resit you are required to improve and resubmit your original work as well as adding a further reflective commentary discussing what you have learned from the process.  You must resubmit your work using the specific resit Turnitin link on Moodle.

1.Review your previously submitted work and read carefully the feedback given by the marker.

2.Use this feedback to help you revisit and rewrite your work, improving it in the areas identified as weak in the original marking process

3.Include with your resubmission an additional reflective piece on what you understand was weak, how you set about addressing this and what you have learned from this that may help you with further assignments. You should address the following specifically:

i) Identify tutor feedback points on your original work and identify where/how the resit work has changed (give page number) in response to feedback

ii) Identify the lessons you have learnt from doing the resit

iii) Reflect on how your feedback and this process will help you improve future assignments