Operations Management Assessment Task The purpose of this assessment is to assess your written skills in both an academic and business context. It will also provide you with the opportunity to demonstrate relevant professional skills that employers will expect to see from potential employees.

You are to prepare a briefing report addressing a current operations management process/topic that is an issue for the ‘customer’. Within the report, you are to provide evidence of your investigations into the issue, identify the challenges that the issue poses and propose relevant solutions/recommendations that are relevant and appropriate to the evidence presented.

Your target audience will be management personnel of a local SME. Within your briefing report, they will want to see evidence of current research, both industries related as well as relevant academic research.

When writing your briefing report for the company that you have identified, you must ensure that:

• Within your report, there is also a focus within the field/industry that you are studying as part of your course (i.e. the company and report must be related to Operations Management).
• The briefing report is written in such a way that it will be of interest and relevance to the sector(s) as a whole.
• The company you choose is not one that you have used within previous assessments, nor an issue you have previously investigated, for any other Level 4 or 5 assessments.

Operations Management Assessment Task Assessment Information

Students will be required to investigate and research additional information to that covered in lectures and seminars in order to make practical recommendations and demonstrate the application of relevant concepts and theories. This means that you will be expected to provide evidence from a range of sources. You will also need to identify an issue that is substantive enough (i.e. a major operational issue) for you to research and make credible & relevant recommendations about.

Formative assessment opportunities will be provided during the seminars through the completion of case study exercises, presentations, draft online submissions etc.

This must be your own work; i.e. you cannot submit work that is the same as other students or those that you may be working with for other assessments. If you do so, then any such work will be subject to our academic misconduct guidelines & procedures

The briefing report should be written in the 3rd person.

At a minimum, the briefing report should contain the following sections:

• Background Information (company)
• Identified issue (industry & academic research into the issue)
• Challenge(s) facing company (as a result of issue or potential issue)
• Conclusions
• Recommendations

Specifically, you will need to include the following:

• An understanding of how to identify company stakeholders and their requirements
• An understanding of how to apply and improve quality standards within the company
• A description of how a quality audit should be conducted within the company
• An understanding of how to promote continuous improvement & change within the company

Depending on the nature of the issue you identify and how you want to present the information, you may feel that you want to include additional sections.

You must cite your sources within the briefing paper as well as at the end (in the Harvard method of referencing)