Purpose
In the light of the new vision you have developed for the Interim assessment, it is now time to redesign operations processes and supply networks to deliver better value for the customers.
Write a report that critically evaluates a process (or the operation, or the supply network) of your organisation or an organisation you are familiar with, and propose recommendations for improvement.
Assessment brief
Your report should:
• Describe the selected process (or operation/supply network) so that the reader can clearly understand it. If the process is large, you may focus on only a part of it i.e. delimit the scope.
• Critically analyse the process (or operation/supply network) of the organisation using the operations management principles taught in any three of the following topics, and propose recommendations which would contribute to delivering better value for the customers
Please ensure you select at least one topic from each column of the following table in your selection of the three topics.
Operations Design Decisions Operation Delivery and Development Decisions
1. Process Design – Positioning 5. Resource Planning and Control
2. Process Design – Flow Configuration 6. Lean or Agile Supply Chains
3. Supply Network Configuration 7. Lean Synchronisation
4. Long-Term Capacity Design 8. Total Quality Management
• Use the concept of ‘Operations Strategy Matrix’ taught in Topic 1 of your learning materials and the article by Bollard et al. (2017) provided below to demonstrate how the proposed recommendations can have a strategic impact for the business in a holistic and coherent way.
• Read and incorporate the following article in to your report:
The following article discusses how digitisation, advanced analytics, lean process design, intelligent automation and business process outsourcing can help companies derive the next-generation operations model. You may use the insights from this article to demonstrate how the proposed recommendations could have a strategic impact on the business in a holistic and coherent way.
Bollard, A, Larrea, E, Singla, A & Sood, R 2017, The next generation operating model for the digital world, McKinsey & Company, viewed 12 January 2019, https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/digital-mckinsey/our-insights/the-next-generation-operating-model-for-the-digital-world
Assessment requirements
The required word length for this assessment is 2750 words (plus or minus 10%).
• In terms of structure, presentation and style you are required to use:
o AIB standard report format
o AIB preferred Microsoft Word settings
author-date style referencing (which includes in-text citations plus a reference list).
These requirements are detailed in the AIB Style Guide.
• Reference lists for AIB assessments normally contain the following number of relevant references from different sources: 6–12 (for MBA assessments). Ideally, the references shouldn’t be more than 5-years old.
• All references must be from credible sources such as books, industry-related journals, magazines, company documents and recent academic articles.
