Reference no: EM132330756

Report Brief

Recent signals seem to show a dramatic improvement in car sales in the UK as well as output. Manufacturing is beginning to boom once more in the US and the UK is catching up. However, some major challenges still remain with some manufacturers still facing particular difficulties (e.g. Ford, Vauxhall, Volkswagen, Toyota, et. al.) and some riddled in scandal.

You have been appointed as a Senior Consultant to a major UK/EU car manufacturer of your choice to write a short business report to the Board of Directors. This report should focus on the performance of UK/EU carmakers in a global business environment and how they have adopted approaches to improve and sustain business excellence.

You are specifically tasked to:

1. Critically assess the lessons that have been learnt and influence that the Japanese car manufacturers have had on the organisational performance of UK/EU automotive manufacturers:
a. Lean thinking
b. Supply chain management
c. Quality leadership

2. Critically investigate the challenges and pressures faced by a carmaker of your choice to deal with supply chain vulnerability as a result of global sourcing (particularly risks associated with sourcing from low cost countries, e.g. BRIC countries) and continued trends to "leaning down".

3. Make recommendations on the performance objectives that should be adopted to ensure that the chosen carmaker can remain competitive in the face of competition

You are also free to adapt the context of the case to a geographical location that is more familiar to you. Remember that this will have an impact upon your response, writing style and tone of your report. The intended audience for your report is the Board of Directors of your chosen organisation - not the marker! This a very important point - make sure you style and address your report to the intended reader, including question 1 (which will provide some context and background to the Board of Directors).

You are expected to undertake independent research using the academic databases available to you. Many articles have been suggested to you in each unit and the background article that accompanies this brief provides a good reference list that you should engage with. You must go beyond these sources to obtain a higher award. For instance, Womack and Jones, Holweg, Hines and Katayama and Bennett will be good authors to start you off for Q1 and the below for Q2:

Report specifications

Your report should be a maximum of 2,500 words (+/- 10%) excluding title page, references, and appendices. Sticking to a strict word limit is difficult and an important skill for you to acquire, so make sure that you write in a concise and focused manner. It should be typed font size 12 and 1.5 line spacing and must be presented in portrait format, not landscape. Please provide an Executive Summary and Contents Page. This report is worth 45% of your total grade for this module.

An essential feature of the report is to illustrate how theoretical constructs or models can be critically analysed and applied to organisations in practice. You are therefore advised to read widely. In fact, unless you have read and referenced at least 10 discrete references, it is unlikely that you have done sufficient reading to demonstrate the basic requirements of this assignment. To gain higher awards you will need to do your own supporting research - beyond the prescribed and recommended reading (including the academic references listed in the background article which should be deemed a good starting point). Beware of sources from the Internet (e.g. no Wikipedia; Business Balls): apart from reputable and academic peer-reviewed references that can be downloaded through the Internet (commonly via the library catalogue); most Internet references are not considered reliable for an academic piece of work. Academic journals generally offer a better source than textbooks.

You must use APA 6th Referencing system.

Attachment:- Assessment brief - Creating Business Excellence and Marketing.rar