Describe the organization. What is the product or service? What is the ownership structure? What are its competitive advantages? What are its operations competitive advantages? Describe the industry. Who are its primary competitors?

Operations Management Term Project

The purpose of this project is for you to explore the operations function of an existing organization.  Your group is expected to select an organization and a process.  This may be a service organization, a manufacturing organization, a government entity, a health service organization.  Your selection must be approved by the professor.  (See Deliverable 1)

Deliverable 1 Proposal:  Briefly describe the organization or part of the organization that you will be using for this project.  List your contact person with appropriate contact information.  Be sure you have permission to access the part of the organization that you wish to study.  Be sure that you can create all deliverables for this project – if not you will need to select another organization.  What process will you focus on?  What product or service does it create?  DO NOT CONTINUE UNTIL YOU HAVE RECEIVED APPROVAL FROM THE PROFESSOR.

Deliverable 2 Overview and Environment: Describe the organization.  What is the product or service?  What is the ownership structure?  What are its competitive advantages?  What are its operations competitive advantages?  Describe the industry.  Who are its primary competitors?  How does the competitive environment affect its operations?  Discuss the product’s location in the product life cycle.

Deliverable 3 Process Description:  Pick a product or service of this organization.  What process strategy do they use to create this product/service?  What are the inputs to this process?  What transformational activities do they perform to add value?  What are the outputs?  Describe the process using a flow chart, a process activity chart, service system mapping, or value-stream mapping.

Deliverable 4 Waiting-Line: Describe the waiting-line(s) used to process a product or service in the selected process.  Describe the ‘customer’, ‘waiting line’, waiting line priority, ‘servers’.

Deliverable 5 Quality:  Describe the organizations approach to quality for the product/service.  How do they ensure quality?  Do they use any quality tools discussed in class?  Do they use inspections?

Deliverable 6 Process Layout: Describe the layout of the process.  Using Visio – draw the layout of the process.

Deliverable 7 Supply Chain: Describe the organization’s supply chain.  Who are its most important suppliers?  Who are its customers?  Do they outsource?  Do they use a many suppliers strategy or few suppliers strategy?

Deliverable 8 Inventory: Describe the organizations inventory: raw material, WIP, MRO, finished goods.  Where in the process do they hold inventory?  What are the plusses and minuses of holding inventory for this organization?  How do they decide when to order and how much to order?   Does the organization use any just-in-time or lean practices?

Deliverable 9 Final Report:  You will receive feedback from me for each of the above deliverables.  The final deliverable is the above deliverables improved based on the feedback and combined into a final report.  See final report format below.

General suggestions: 

• Provide specific examples
• Use the operations management terminology discussed in class and your text; define the terms as you use them
• Use visuals whenever appropriate

Format

• Double spaced
• Italicize OM terms when defining
• Use headings – each deliverable should be a heading in the final report

For the final report:

• add an Abstract
• add a Table of Contents