Your summative assessment for this module takes the form of an essay in 2500 words.
You must choose an organisation or business like an automotive company (manufacturing industry)
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 the 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).
Formative Assessment You should write down an essay plan (500 words) 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
Referencing
You MUST use the Harvard System. The Harvard system is very easy to use once you become familiar with it.