Individual Report (25%)

Task assigned:

Students should select an organisation (Retail industry) and work through the following questions relating to operations within the organisation. Students should write a report (using the headings below as a guide) discussing the operations of the organisation, and making recommendations for improvement.

You may adopt a reasonably formal style and structure for your report. Include an executive summary and conclusions and recommendations. Students should note that they do not need to look at an entire company but instead may decide to focus on a particular business unit or operation. For example the group may want to look at a large international company but only have access to one part of the organisation this is perfectly acceptable (but you may wish to discuss this with your lecturer/counsellor before starting).

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 doesnt 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?

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?

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?

Things that must be in the report :

1.Background

A brief explanation on the company selected and the product/ brands background

(Founder/History/types of product/concept of the restaurant/marketing strategy/other relevant issue)

2.Explanation on the topic

- Definition of the topic

- Theories/concepts related to the topic (4V, Layout)

3. Investigation and Analysis

Explained on approach to gathering information and presented clearly in the report.

Use of appropriate models, tools, frameworks to help in the analyse

4.Recommendation & Conclusion

Recommendation and conclusion linked to the body of the report.