UGB 262 Quality Management for Organisational Excellence Assignment Guidance

Assignment Submission
Students are required to submit their coursework through JIRA. Only assessments submitted through JIRA will be marked. Any other submission including submission to your study centre in hard copy will be treated as a non-submission.
If your centre supports Turnitin©, a copy of your Turnitin© originality report must be submitted in conjunction with your assignment.

Assessment
Your work will be assessed against the following criteria:
1. Knowledge – Your work should show knowledge of the module content.
2. Understanding – Your report should demonstrate an understanding of UGB 262 Quality Management for Organisational Excellence and use the ‘Tools and Theories’ introduced in this module Lectures and workshops.
3. Insight – Your report should show an ability to analyse the ‘case study’ in the light of the module content and your own reading.
4. Clarity – Your report should be well structured and clearly presented. Notes:
1. The assignment must be presented in a form that complies with the basic conventions of a report format (see Guide to Basic Study Skills). An electronic copy must be submitted to Turnitin via ‘Canvas’.
2. Word count – 3000 words (+/- 10% words)

Assignment Guidance Notes:

Business Report Structure.
Size 12 font, spacing 1.5, include word count at the end of the report.

Report Presentation
• Front Sheet – Name / Student Number / Programme / Module / Date / Workshop Tutor Name
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Main Body of Report – Analysis of theory and practice related to this ‘case study’
• Conclusion and Recommendations
• Appendix – not included in word count

General guidance and typical distribution of word count would be:
Introduction - 250 words
Main body analysis – 2000
Conclusion and Recommendations – 750 (collective)
The criteria for grading the assignment will be:
The assignment will be graded for individuals on the basis of the specific criteria outlined in the
Generic Assessment Criteria (Undergraduate) on the following page.

Note:
The “Presentation” element of the Generic Assessment Criteria (Undergraduate) will also be used (additional to the above assignment guidance notes) to assess the report structure.

Case Study
Flex - a $26B electronics manufacturing services and supply chain logistics company that sits pretty on the Global Fortune 500 list.
Flex was initially founded way back in 1969, under the moniker Flextronics, Inc., in Silicon Valley. Its original charter was to provide overflow manufacturing of printed circuit boards for companies based in Silicon Valley. Over the next several decades, the company broadened its scope to become a contract electronics manufacturing firm, pioneering automated manufacturing techniques, and becoming the first American manufacturer to construct an offshore manufacturing facility in Singapore. Through the acquisition of other manufacturers, Flextronics expanded its global footprint to become the third-largest electronics manufacturing services and original design manufacture company in the world (in terms of revenue, as of 2017). It now boasts manufacturing operations in 30+ countries and employs roughly 160,000 people. In 2015, the company shortened its name to Flex.

Flex's mission statements are as follows:
• "Make great products for our customers that create value and improve people's lives."
• “Steward sustainable manufacturing and operations practices to minimize environmental impact.” To do this, it employs many advanced manufacturing techniques, including automation and robotics, simulation and software and additive manufacturing. Flex plays in quite a few areas, providing complete design, engineering, and manufacturing services to fields including aerospace, automotive, computing, industrial, consumer, infrastructure, medical, and more.

CEO Revathi Advaithi put it succinctly this way: "Name an end market—we probably are in it." Of particular importance at this current global moment is its involvement in the medical sector, where it claims a spot in the Top 15 global manufacturers of medical devices. Unless you've been living under a rock, you probably have heard about the potential shortages of life-saving ventilators in hospitals overloaded with critical COVID-19 patients.

Turns out Flex makes those—furthermore, the company says that this year alone, it will manufacture over 35,000 of these ventilators. That is more than the total amount of ventilators built by all the other global manufacturers last year combined. Other crucial medical products Flex manufactures include oxygenators, patient monitors, testing equipment, and ICU-related necessities. In the case of its five different ventilator programs, the company says it ramped up and starting shipping units in five weeks—much quicker than the traditional 9-18 months it usually takes to bring new medical technology to bear. Given the urgency of the crisis, the company's expedition of the process is crucial.

Fortune recently published a great interview with CEO Revathi Advaithi, in which she explained her company's response to the current pandemic. She stressed the fact that her number one concern during the crisis is her employees' health and safety. Most of Flex's workforce are factory workers, a demographic that is particularly susceptible to spreading the virus due to UGB262_Page 4 of 8 their often-close proximity to each other on factory floors. However, given the essential work Flex is doing to aid the relief efforts, simply closing down for a few months really wasn't an option.