BUSINESS SCHOOL
OPERATIONS STRATEGY ACROSS THE ENTERPRISE
ASB 2018: 2024-25
Individual Assignment: Operations Strategy in a Period of Rapid Change
Submission Deadline: Thursday 1st May 2025 – 23.59 UK time
You will be required to submit an electronic copy in Blackboard.
Weight: 50% of module mark
Format: Business Report 2000 words +/- 10% (1800 – 2200 Words)
Context
Major changes have happened in the business environment in the last decade, including, but not limited to: the digital revolution, especially artificial intelligence; the worldwide pandemic; climate change and geo-political instability. In some cases, these have required organisations to implement the degree of change that might have taken several years, in a period of months. This challenging period has provided us with a set of live case studies in Operations Strategy and we can now look again at enterprises, assess the changes in operations, evaluate their success and their long-term significance.
Task
The end product of this assessment will be a business report.
Your initial task is to choose a leading company, in one of the following sectors: food production and retailing, fashion clothing, sports goods, construction, consumer electronics, household cleaning and hygiene products. You must choose a company that operates at least at national level in a major economy. This choice will be subject to tutor approval.
You will briefly introduce the firm and set out how this firm has responded to the challenges to change their operations. To do this, you will need to use the key content in the module lectures and illustrate the concepts with materials you retrieve and interpret during your research. Your introduction to the company should take no more than 400 words and should focus on their principal activity and on their operations not on marketing activity or financial performance.
Your main body of content should cover matters such as:
· Sector – main product areas
· Manufacturing and processing
· Structure – key aspects such as vertical integration
· Supply chain
· Distribution systems
· Principal customers – intermediate and final
· Performance monitoring and quality systems
· Innovation in products, production and distribution
· Digital technologies employed in operations
Please note that it is not expected to cover all of these in detail, but to focus on significant changes.
Your primary source of information/evidence will be the digital, broadcast and printed media, specialist publications and your support in terms of theory and practice should derive from academic and business journals.
As stated above, you need to agree with the tutor which organisation you are to focus on by week four.
Further guidance
Format:
A business report has to start with a good executive summary, a summary of contents, and then the main body should be set out in a logical format, with headings and sub-headings, illustrated with relevant tables and graphs. The text should flow, and all technical reports should be kept in the appendix. It should have a simple and attractive cover page.
It should look, read and feel like an article suitable for inclusion in a mainstream business publication, such as Business Week, Management Today or the Economist.
Please note that at the level you have now reached, it is not sufficient to merely describe what has happened. You are expected to analyse and evaluate the information you discover in the context of the theory you have been introduced to.
The main body should be 1200-1400 words while the executive summary should be no more than one page and preferably about 10 lines. The words used in the executive summary are not included in the wordcount. A conclusion should be provided which summarises the main points and any overall key messages.
References, following the Harvard format, should be coming from the Internet, the recommended textbook, journal articles and the press, blogs, etc.
Content: At the assignment launch stage and in the timetabled workshop sessions, I will discuss the range of points that you could include and explore. These elements are closely aligned to chapters 1-5 of the recommended textbook (Operations Management, 10th edition, Slack and Brandon-Jones). Earlier editions of this text have much of the same content, but the chapter order may be different and the content less current.
One important point to re-emphasise is that the focus must be on operations and not on marketing or financial aspects of the business.
Marking Scheme: This is an integrated assignment, and the overall mark will be based on the actual content, the sources retrieved and used, and the format of the report. The expectation is that the theory and models discussed in the module lectures would be used in your report.
Ensure work submitted is your own effort – DO NOT PLAGIARISE:
You are reminded not to copy material from any sources without properly referencing it, as this constitutes plagiarism: cases of plagiarism will be referred to the Business School Academic Integrity Officer and will be subject to a deduction of marks, which can result in an overall mark of 0%.
The copying of material extends to the use of essay mills and AI technology such as ChatGPT. You are reminded that the use of such services to generate work in substitute of your own original contributions contravenes Bangor’s Academic Integrity policy. Any detected attempt to use such tools will also result in referral to the Business School Academic Integrity Officer
Module outcomes assessed in this assignment:
· Examine and explain the processes and systems used to improve the quality of operations, manage risk and plan effectively for long run effectiveness.
· Describe and explain the process of innovation in the context of operations.
· Evaluate techniques and processes used in the planning and control of operations.