Reference no: EM132407302

MBA503 - Operations Management and Decision-Making Models - Kaplan Business School

Assessment - Individual participation in on-line discussion forums

Your Task

For this assessment, students are required to participate (by making postings) in the online discussion forum for this subject located on the LMS. Students are required to make these posts in weeks 3,4 and 6.

Assessment Description
Of these three postings:
• Students need to post in each of the weeks - 3, 5 and 6
• A minimum of one of these posts should respond to the question posed by the subject coordinator
• A minimum of two of these posts needs to respond to and build upon the posts of other students.

Posts are to be a minimum of 100 words and no more than 300 words. Academic references are to be included to support the position or argument you are developing. Marks will be allocated for the quality, timeliness and quantity of the posts. The weeks chosen will ensure that students comment and draw conclusions on:

• The impact of internal and external factors on operations management
• Facilities management and forecasting
• Reflections on the guest speaker and what they had to say about the area of operations and decision making.

Question:

"While different businesses have different internal conditions, it is easiest to view these potential attributes as generalized categories. A value chain is a common tool used to accomplish this. A value chain identifies the supporting activities (employee skills, technology, infrastructure, etc.) and the primary activities (acquiring inputs, operations, distribution, sales, etc.) that can potentially create profit.

The external environment is even more diverse and complex than the internal environment, and there are many effective models to discuss, measure, and analyze it (i.e., Porter's Five Force, SWOT Analysis, PESTEL framework, etc.).

With both the internal value chain and external environment in mind, upper management can reasonably derive a set of strategic principles which internally leverage strengths and externally capture opportunities to create profits." Comment on and discuss the validity of this statement. If senior management are not responsive to changing environmental conditions what could be some of the effects on operational management?

Attachment:- Operations Management and Decision Making.rar