Operation & Supply Chain Management

Term-End Staff Graded Assignment

At the end of the course, a term-end staff graded assignment is included. This reading provides details about this assignment.

Assignment Title: Designing a Basic Operations and Supply Chain Plan for an Organization

Learning Objectives:

• Design a basic operations plan.
• Identify the basic operations and supply chain management strategies.
• Draw conclusions based on the findings.

Assignment Type: This is an individual assignment. Each participant is required to submit their response by uploading the answer document in MS Word format.

Time Estimate: 10 hours

Passing Threshold: 40%

Assignment Overview:

For this assignment, you need to choose any physical, consumer product such as a car, smartphone, furniture, watch, toothpaste, sanitizer, shoe, microwave, refrigerator, or fan. Identify a company that manufactures the product that you have chosen. The identified company should be a publicly listed company (NYSE/NSE/BSE/Forbes top 500 company).

Based on the organization that you have identified, answer the following questions. To find the relevant information to answer these questions, refer to the company website and annual reports (annexures to the balance sheet and directors note). In addition, you can refer to other sources of information such as press releases and news articles. You may also need to refer to the annual report of the other companies in the same business, partners, and competitors. Include the reference to your source of information in your answers.

Question 1

How does the company describe itself or its manufacturing plants from the following perspectives:

1. What is the product category
2. What is the companys standing related to competition
3. What is the overall company strategy
4. What are the companys operational strategies
5. What are productivity aspects of the company
6. What is their approach for quality control regarding their products and plants
7. What are the details of the process selection and facility layout of the plant
8. How have they done strategic capacity planning
9. Why was the specific plant location chosen

Integrate the above points with the overall product quality, production capacity, and process quality control of the plant/company. Do you think the product quality or price represents what the company states

(Approximate word limit: 8001,000)

Question 2

For the company you chose in question 1, describe the supply chain by identifying all the supply chain levels. Discuss this from the following perspectives:

• How do the raw material and products move within the supply chain Provide details about the movement regarding the technology used, vehicle typologies used, warehouses used, logistics infrastructure owned or outsourced, and patterns in terms of geographies.
• What are the production cycles How frequent is the product movement

Provide reasons to support the companys choices about movement of raw material within the supply chain and production cycles.

(Approximate word limit: 500600)

Question 3

Have there been any changes in their operations management/supply chain logistics and transport management strategies in the last five/ten years What are these changes Why did they initiate these changes Provide reasons to support the changes made by the company.

(Approximate word limit: 300350)

Question 4

Discuss the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and competition the company has been facing in the market from the supply chain perspective in the last five years, as provided in their annual reports. What are their plans and strategies to cater to these issues Could these plans and strategies have been better

(Approximate word limit: 500600)

Question 5

Identify and outline the various issues that the company faced or is facing during the Covid-19 crisis. Highlight the effect of the pandemic on their year-on-year growth projections, profitability, production plans, supply chain disruptions, inventory management, logistics management, market share value, and market capitalization.

(Approximate word limit: 300350)