Assignment #4
Students will prepare a graduate level analysis to show a deep understanding about how to beat the competition using operations and supply chain. This is the most important paper in the class and should demonstrate all that have learned during this course. You may need to make this paper longer than three to five pages to make your case. Remember this paper is not a book report of what you have read, or a book report on a company, but a direct application of what you have read and learned in this class to show how a company can beat the competition by using operations and supply chain tools.
This paper is designed for you to demonstrate through application and analysis the key points you have learned in this class and how you will apply these key points.
#1 Choose a company: you can use a small or a medium sized company, it is not recommended that you use the same company that you have used for papers in this class. However, if you use the same company for this paper that you have analyzed for other papers in this class, you may not use the same data or analyses for this paper that you have used in other papers for this assignment. You are in danger of failing this paper (and this class) if you duplicate your analyses from other papers. Remember it is a violation of academic integrity to use material from one class or one assignment for another.
#2 Analyze: the competition for a company you have chosen. Through research get to know the industry or field that your company occupies. Find out who is doing well in that field? Who is not? Why? What are the core competencies for your chosen organization? What do they do better than anyone else in their industry? As part of this paper you must identify the competition (using a chart?) and then show the strengths and weaknesses of each of the competition to look for a window of opportunity for the company you have chosen (all of this needs to be cited with graduate level sources).
#3 Create: three to five specific examples of how your chosen company can beat their competition using information that you have directly learned in this class about operations and supply chain. Use the concepts AND THE analytical models provided to gain this advantage. These recommendations need to be backed up with analysis, citations from the text book and independent research. The recommendations need to be innovative and interesting and very well thought out and written.
#4 Write: like a graduate student, APA, sources referenced, perfect grammar. Clear strong declarative sentences. Use very few pronouns. Include a strong reference section from the text book and additional resources from your research. Be sure to use APA headings (see below).
#5. Question: Describe the powerful questions that you will ask and answer in this quantitative and qualitative analysis to gain competitive analysis through operations.
#6. Class Concepts: You should include at a minimum three to five of the following concepts in your paper (See Rubric below to see how these class concepts (a – g) are to be woven through your paper):
a) Introduction to operations and the global supply chain
b) Foundations of operations
c) Process innovation and mapping
d) Managing systems in the supply chain
e) Integrating relationships with suppliers and customers
f) Planning supply chain innovation including technology
g) Managing for change and innovation to create value
Business papers always use headings, and graduate students need to use APA headings:
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/16/
