You are required to select a real business, understand its operations in relation to the various supply chain and operations management concepts discussed in the class, and propose suggestions for improvement. A 3000 word report is required to be submitted by the deadline:

Choice of Business: It could be any business such as restaurant, retail outlet, small engineering firm, book store, petrol station, hair dresser etc. Each student needs to choose a different organisation though the sector could be the same (for example, two students can choose different restaurants for their project). Ideally a SME is preferable as this will provide you with an opportunity to undertake an end to end analysis of operations.

Operations Analysis: You may need to do secondary research to get a better perspective of the operations management issues in organisations of the type chosen by you. Interviews with customers, suppliers, owner, employees should be a part of the data collection strategy, along with observations and collection of historic as well as primary data Collected data like inventory records, interview questionnaire etc can be included in the appendix.

As this project involves end to end analysis of operations, it will be important for you to apply most of the operations concepts and best practices that you have learnt during the lectures and discussions.

Recommendations: This should be based on in-depth research of best practices and concepts that are widely accepted in the commercial world and the learning outcomes from class room discussion. Your recommendations should be justified by examples and also its potential impact to the chosen organisation. It would be useful to include the views of the owner on the proposed improvements.

Format of report:

The report should have the following format:

Executive summary

Business and operations background

Methodology used

Key operations management problems/issues

Recommendations

Appendices

In terms of word count, the report needs to be around 3000 words. However, the report can have more but not less number of words.

Marking criteria: The report will be graded on the basis of the extent of operations management concepts used, their appropriateness for the business context, the depth of data collection, the legitimacy of the problems identified and the creativity of the recommendations and the quality of justification used for the same (80% weight age). The remaining 20% of the marks will be based on the structure of the report, the sequence of information and the writing style incl. the quality of written communication.