This module provides insight and opportunities to challenge current operations management approaches used in a manufacturing or service organisation. You will select an organisation and work through a series of questions relating to the processes within it. It is suggested you approach this assignment as a consultant who is tasked with assessing the organisations approach and providing a critical overview of its operations with recommendations.

Begin by selecting an organisation Select an organisation, such as factory, bank, university/college, hospital/General Practitioners surgery, retail store/and work through a series of supermarket, fast food outlet, etc. Do not look at an entire section of the organisation, as this could be overwhelming. Select a particular business unit or operation, for example, you want to look at a large international company but only have access to one part of the company for instance the maintenance department this is perfectly acceptable. The following below is required to be covered in the report: 1.PRODUCTS, SERVICES, and PROCESSES Identify the challenges that are faced in the organisation regarding the process. Describe the organisation briefly and identify its main products/services and identify the process Determine if the organisation use the ideas and principles of process design and management to improve the performance of its processes. Determine if the volume, variety, variation, and visibility characteristics of processes are reflected in the way they are managed. If no, give recommendations and if there is believe it can be improved, state. Draw a 4Vs profile for the organisations products/services. What would you recommend to the organisation if they asked you to advise them in improving their processes? 2.FORCASTING, PROCESS DESIGN and ANALYSIS: Investigate the organisations approach to forecasting? How could this approach be improved? A description of the process of the organisation in terms of their layout is required, Identify the relevant technology used or not, as well as the job requirements of the staff. Investigate if the selected organisation process is diagonal of the product-process matrix, if they are not, help the selected organisation make recommendations for improvement. The use of process mapping technique is required to describe one of the processes of the organisation indicating process inputs, transformation activities, and outputs. Use the process mapping technique to describes a process of the organisation as well as indicating process inputs. Does the process design objectives clearly relate to the businesses strategic objectives? Identify the problems with the current process and give recommendations. 3. CAPACITY MANAGEMENT: Identify if the organisation has the right capacity. If appropriate discuss the methods that the organisation use to decide the capacity level of its facilities and if no, discuss suggested methods that the organisation can use in deciding the capacity level of its facilities and discuss using appropriate data. How does the organisation cope with fluctuations in demand over the day, week, month, or year? What alternatives might be used to best meet the demand and discuss why this alternative is preferably to the current approach used, support with data or appropriate information.

4. INVENTORY MANGEMENT: Is demand dependent or independent? Discuss and analyse the inventory planning and control system of the organisation. If possible, obtain data to show how the system is working (for example, re-order points and quantities, ABC analysis of usage value). How could the organisation improve their approach to inventory management, support findings with data or appropriate information and justify how this will improve the organisation approach to inventory management. 5. RESOURCE PLANNING AND CONTROL: Describe the resource planning and control system of the organisation including the system interface with customers and suppliers Critically discuss the organisations approaches to loading, sequencing, and scheduling where appropriate. Identify a process within the organisation that has a bottleneck and develop a detailed plan for reducing or eliminating the bottleneck. describe how would you use the MRP logic to develop requirements plan to one of the organisations products. Suggest how the organisation might do to improve its planning and control procedures. REPORT: Your submitted report should contain an executive summary, at the start, of your findings that summarises the questions headings below.

a.The aim, b. problem identified in their process is required, c. a conclusion discussing your own reflective thoughts is required. At the end of the report, Give a summary of the findings, as a conclusion, from the analysis (assignment brief) to reflect your own opinion formed from the analysis.