ASSIGNMENT BRIEF Background
Operations Management (OM) is an important aspect of business (Slack et al, 2013; Greasely, 2013; Patton et al, 2011). Both service and manufacturing organisations use OM to ensure they are competitive and assist in providing and maintaining good levels of customer service (Johnson et al, 2012). Developing a system of an organisations operation can be advantageous both for both the customer and organisation (Bamford and Forrester, 2010). Subsequently, once a system has been developed and understood it should be possible to determine why the system works well, or not well, and to recommend possible production related improvements that will assist both parties concerned.

Task
In this assignment analyse an operation of your choice. You need to be able to visit and observe this operation in practice. For example you could select a shop, cinema, restaurant, bar, library, gym or garden centre. Your tutor will give some guidance on your choice of operation. Your assignment should address the following questions:

1. How does operations management support the strategic aims of your chosen operation? Pay particular attention to the five performance objectives.

2. Discuss the customer expectation and perception of quality. How is quality managed within the operation?

3. Visually present the supply chain of your chosen operation in a diagram. Critically analyse the supply chain management.

4. From your previous answers, how can operations management be improved to better support the strategic aims of the operation? Give two specific recommendations for improvement and support your recommendations with industry best practice and academic literature.
Format
Your assignment should be in a report format, being clearly structured using headings, subheadings etc. It is not necessary to include an executive summary at the beginning of the report. Your assignment should be presented using Arial 12 font, 1.5 line spacing, and it should be approximately 3,000 (+/- 10%) words in length. Your word count is from the introduction to conclusion sections. You must endeavour to use theory explicitly at all stages, but do not spend too much time describing a theory. While you must be explicit about the theories, models, techniques etc. that you use, you can assume that the reader is familiar with them. What the reader requires is evidence of your ability to understand and apply the theory, and learn from in order to support the development of your findings and/or ideas.
You must cite all sources on which you have relied, for example textbooks, journal articles, web pages etc. using the Harvard Bibliographic referencing system. If you do not cite all sources, then you may be accused of plagiarism, and that may endanger your success in passing the module. If you are in any doubt about how to reference your work, please obtain guidance from the library and/or your academic librarian(s) for this module.

Please do use diagrams, illustrations, tables, graphics etc. wherever these are helpful, and remember that these do not count towards your word limit. If you do use these, please do not put them in the appendices if they are part of your discussion. Appendices are the appropriate places to put supporting material, however, remember if the reader is satisfied with the main points of your discussion; the supporting information within the appendices may not even be reviewed.
Marking Criteria
Your assignment will be marked against the following criteria:
1. A professional layout and writing style using the report format. Writing has to be concise and supported by appropriate citation of sources using the Harvard Bibliographic Referencing System.
2. Evidence of your ability to accurately observe and to critically analyse operations management issues in practice.
3. Evidence of a good understanding of relevant operations management concepts and techniques based on material presented in class and in the core reading.
4. Evidence of your ability to conduct primary research that provides valuable insights into the chosen operation and supports the key arguments you present.
5. Evidence of wider reading and your ability to engage with suitable academic literature and appropriate secondary data to strengthen and support your work. 6. Evidence of critical thinking that questions the status quo and provides well reasoned recommendations that are based on your research, as well as a thorough review of academic and practitioner literature.

The above criteria do not carry specific weightings. Your overall mark will represent a judgement of the extent to which you have provided evidence that you have achieved the learning outcomes for the unit.