Evaluate the role of an operations function within an organisation and develop a clear vision for the operations contribution to the business.

Interim assessment

Purpose

In today’s highly competitive and fast-changing business and technology environments it is imperative that operations managers step back from their day to day routines, and rethink how the operations function of the organisation intends to contribute value to the business and articulate a clear vision that can guide the operations decisions.

The purpose of this activity is to provide you with the opportunity to evaluate the role of an operations function within an organisation and develop a clear vision for the operations contribution to the business.

Assessment brief

Reflecting on what you learned from the collaborative forum assessment, write an essay evaluating the current level of contribution of an operations function within an organisation and articulating a clear vision that can guide the operations design, delivery and development decisions of the organisation.

The organisation can be your company or any organisation with which you are familiar.

Please note that your essay does not need to be presented in the formal AIB report format stated in AIB style guide. However, there are some key components that need to be present as follows:

• On the cover page of your document, state the title of the essay, your name, student ID and the word count
• In the first section, provide a brief description of the organisation and explain why you think operations management is important for the organisation. (about 200 words)
• In the second section, use Hayes and Wheelwright’s model (see textbook, p 48-49) to identify the current level of contribution of operation function to the business. Justify your answer by using relevant operations management processes, practices and capabilities within the organisation. (about 300 words)
• In the third section, critically analyse the five performance objectives for the selected operation and evaluate how well the current performance is aligned with customer requirements and overall goals of the business. (about 500 words)
• In the final part of the report, based on your evaluation, articulate a new version for the operations function of the organisation. Please ensure you clearly define the relative priorities of the key performance objectives, associated trade off and explain the intended contribution (i.e. the desired future state) of the operation function to the overall business. (about 250 words)

Assessment requirements

The required word length for this assessment is 1250 words (plus or minus 10%).

•  In terms of structure, presentation and style you are required to use:
• structure as per the instructions provided in the assessment brief above
• AIB preferred Microsoft Word settings
• author-date style referencing (which includes in-text citations plus a reference list).
  
  
  
  
• Reference lists for AIB assessments normally contain the following number of relevant references from different sources: at least four (for MBA assessments). Ideally, the references shouldn’t be more than 5-years old.
• Current reading material/textbook is: Slack, N, Brandon-Jones, A 2018, Operations and process management, 5th edn, Pearson Education Ltd, Harlow; (ISBN: 9781292176130 or 9781292176178).
• Read more at: https://essayroo.com/account/orders/443036#uploaded_files_list
  
  
  
  
• All references must be from credible sources such as books, industry-related journals, magazines, company documents and recent academic articles.
  
  
  
  
• Your grade will be adversely affected if your assessment contains no/poor citations and/or reference list and if your assessment word length is beyond the allowed tolerance level (see Assessment Policy available on AIB website).