Operations Strategy

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?

Product & Service Design

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?

Process Design

Discuss the processes within your chosen organization. From your reading of Topic 4 (Process Design) and other background reading, consider whether or not alternative approaches might lead to improvements in the performance of the organisation. After reading Chapter 6 of the core text , can you comment on the layout of retail outlets or manufacturing facilities belonging to the organisation? How would you go about helping the organization to make improvements? Can you comment on the use of technology?

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?

Innovation and improvement

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?

Supply Chain

Outline the supply chain of the organisation (or part of it), including purchasing, physical distribution management and materials management. How is IT used to supply chain management? Outline how the supply chain might be improved.

Quality Management

Discuss the costs of quality as they apply in your chosen organisation. How are quality problems diagnosed? How could the company improve their approach to quality management? Does the organisation have a formal quality system? Would this be appropriate?