Operations and Supply Chain Management Assignment - Audit Report

Assignment Brief - As part of the formal assessment for the programme you are required to submit an Operations and Supply Chain Management audit report. Please refer to your Student Handbook for full details of the programme assessment scheme and general information on preparing and submitting assignments.

Learning Outcomes: After completing the module, you should be able to:

1. Evaluate how operations management delivers products and services that meet a firm's objectives.

2. Assess how operations managers make decisions in the design of processes and layouts.

3. Analyse how supply chain logistics bring products from raw materials to finished products on a global scale.

4. Deploy analytical and evaluative skills in the analysis of and critical evaluation of operations management scenarios.

5. Develop and synthesize effective and logical strategies to maximize the effectiveness of supply chains.

6. Apply quality and performance measurement tools and techniques to operations and supply chain management.

7. Graduate Attributes: Discipline Expertise

Possess a range of skills to operate within this sector, have a keen awareness of current developments in working practice, being well positioned to respond to change.

Assessment Task - Audit Report

You should produce an audit of the operations and supply chain strategy and management of an organisation with which you are familiar. A suggested structure and breakdown of content for the audit is set out below.

Part 1 - Strategy

Objective: To evaluate how far the organisation has a clear strategy linked to business expectations and focused on effectively meeting customer requirements.

Scope: A brief overview of your chosen organisation. An overview of the strategic direction of your chosen organisation and an evaluation of how the organisation's operations and supply chain management and strategy reflect that. Also, a discussion of how the organisation seeks to meet or exceed its customers' needs and expectations and an assessment how that impacts upon its operations and supply chain management and strategy.

The Audit should address:

• The big picture: strategic direction.
• The impact of organisational strategy on the organisation's operations and supply chain management and strategy.
• Customer service strategy and the effect of that upon the organisation's operations and supply chain management and strategy.

(1,000 words)

Part 2 - Organisation

Objective: To evaluate how far an effective structure exists both enabling effective operations management and helping the organisation to work with its partners to achieve its supply chain goals.

Scope: Identifying and appraising the approach of the organisation to the structure of its operations and supply chain management. Identifying management structures and roles and evaluating how these contribute to the effective management of key operations and supply chain responsibilities. Nature of relationships with external supply chain partners and evaluating their effectiveness / appropriateness.

The Audit should address:

• Key operations management roles and responsibilities.
• Key supply chain management roles and responsibilities.
• The nature of the supply chain structure or network.
• The nature of relationships with supply chain partners.

(1,000 words)

Part 3 - Processes

Objective: To evaluate the organisation's approach to process design and layout, embracing all plan-source-make-deliver operations.

Scope: How the organisation develops a business process model to describe and design the activities required to operate the supply chain, evaluates current process performance, and uses the information for benchmarking and improving that performance.

The Audit should address:

• Business process models and their development.
• Managing operations and supply chain processes.
• Means of process improvement.

(1,000 words)

Part 4 - Information

Objective: To evaluate how far the organisation has reliable information and enabling technology to support effective operations and supply chain planning, execution and decision-making.

Scope: Evaluation of how the organisation's management of information and IT facilitates effective operations decision-making and utilises appropriate tools to enhance operations and supply chain management.

The Audit should address:

• Information infrastructure.
• The effectiveness of information systems for operations and supply chain planning and decision making,

(1,000 words)

Part 5 - Performance

Objective: To assess how organisation measures its operations and supply chain performance and to identify trends in that performance.

Scope: Assess how far the enterprise uses balanced performance indicators to measure operations and supply chain performance and to identify key aspects of performance over time.

The Audit should address:

• Means of operations and supply chain performance measurement.
• Key aspects of performance over time.

(500 words)

Part 6 - Action Plan

Finally, an action plan is to be developed based upon the above analysis to make recommendations to improve practice and performance within the chosen organisation. (500 words).

Note - Maximum word count: 5,000 words. You must use the AU Harvard Referencing method in your assignment.