Resource Planning and Control - Management Report

Assignment Brief

Choose a manufacturing or service organisation (factory, bank, university/college, hospital/General Practitioner’s surgery, retail store/supermarket, fast food outlet, etc.) with which you are familiar and work through the following questions relating to processes within the organisation. The suggested questions to consider under each heading are not exhaustive topics and you may discuss other things you see as being important. You do not need to look at an entire organisation but instead may decide to focus on a particular business unit or operation. For example, you want to look at a large international company – but only have access to one part of the company

Executive Summary Include an executive summary of your findings that summarises the questions headings below. 

Products, Services, and Processes Describe the organisation briefly and identify its main products/services and processes. Does the organisation use the ideas and principles of process design and management to improve the performance of its processes? Are the volume, variety, variation and visibility characteristics of processes reflected in the way they are managed? Draw a 4Vs profile for the organisation’s products/services. Identify the challenges or problems that are faced in the organisation. What would you recommend to the organisation if they asked you to advise them in improving their processes? 

Forecasting, Process Design and Analysis How appropriate is the organisation’s approach to forecasting? How could this approach be improved? How would you describe the processes of the organisation in terms of their layout, the technology (if any) they use, and the jobs of their staff? Are the processes positioned on the “diagonal” of the product-process matrix? If they are not, how can you help the organisation to make improvements? Use the process mapping technique to describe one of the processes of the organisation indicating process inputs, transformation activities, and outputs. Do the process design objectives clearly relate to the businesses’ strategic objectives? What are the main problems with the current processes and how could they be improved? 

Does the organisation have the right size of capacity? If appropriate, discuss the methods that the organisation use to decide on the capacity level of its facilities. How does the organization cope with fluctuations in demand over the day, week, month or year? What alternatives might be used to best meet the demand? 

Management Is demand dependent or independent? Discuss and analyze the inventory planning and control system of the organisation. If possible, obtain data to show how the system is working. How could the organisation improve their approach to inventory management? 

Resource Planning and Control Describe the resource planning and control system of the organisation including the system interface with customers and suppliers. Critically discuss the organisation’s approaches to loading, sequencing and scheduling where appropriate. Do you think there are adequate feedback and control? Identify a process within the organisation that has a bottleneck and develop a detailed plan for reducing or eliminating the bottleneck. If appropriate, describe how would you use the MRP logic to develop a requirements plan to one of the organisation’s products. Suggest how the organisation might do to improve its planning and control procedures. 

Deliverables: You are required to write an Individual Formal Report of no more than 2,500 words (±10%) excluding the Title Page, Declaration Page, Abstract, Table of Content, List of Figures, List of Tables, and Appendices. The report should use the questions headings above as a guide and include an executive summary, conclusions and recommendations.

You are expected to demonstrate achievement of the learning outcomes for this module, and show understanding and application of theory, tools and techniques covered during the lectures (and from other background reading). Consideration will be given in the assessment of the assignment for the structure of your argument, in particular how you have organized your report, how well the argument flows through it, and how cohesive the work as a whole seems. Similarly, consideration will be given to the presentation of the report. The report is expected to be easy to read, without spelling or grammatical errors, within the word limits, appropriately referenced, and presented.