BA 204
Introduction to Operations Management
Spring 1996
Group Project
The group project will be conducted jointly with your BA 202B Managerial
Accounting course. The project will provide you and your group an
opportunity to demonstrate your grasp of operations management and cost
accounting concepts in a real-world situation. You may select either a
service or a manufacturing organization for your study. The TA's will
provide you with further guidance in selecting an organization.
Following
are our expectations for the group project:
- Describe the organization's overall business strategy and the supporting operations strategy of the organization. Analyze the relationship between the two, and assess the fit between the operations strategy and the overall business strategy. (Consult your notes from the first two BA 204 class sessions to refresh your memory on this.)
- Select a particular process within the organization and conduct a
thorough analysis of that process. It is best to identify a process with
which the organization is having trouble. If they are specific about a
problem that they are having, you will have a target for your analysis.
Avoid the temptation to analyze the entire organization. Be specific and
focus on a single process. Characterize the process using tools that have
been covered in class that you believe are appropriate to the situation.
The seven quality tools in the Memory Jogger are particularly useful in this
regard.
- Prepare a cost analysis of the process. (You will better understand
terms used in this description once BA 202B commences.) You will need to
identify all of the process inputs, and devise bases to assign the cost of
the inputs used in the process. Be sure to identify any joint cost or
reciprocal input problems Pay special attention to the utilization of fixed
capacity in the process. You will have to decide whether or how these costs
should be included. If the process is an intermediate step in providing a
product or service, you should determine how the cost of the process should
be treated by the organization.
In some situations, the organization may be reluctant to have you dig
through proprietary financial records. In these cases you should make
estimates, explaining the assumptions you make in doing so, and including
sensitivity analysis where you think it is needed. the use of external
information on input costs will help you make estimates and also provide a
benchmark for assessing the cost-effectiveness of the process you are
studying. Your main focus in this part of the analysis is on helping the
company better identify the relevant costs of the process. So your
description of how the process absorbs cost, based on how it utilizes
inputs, is more important than the numbers themselves.
- Develop recommendations for how the organization should improve the
selected process. Your target audience for the recommendations should be
the people responsible for the process in the organization you are studying.
Discuss specific ways to improve the current process. Make specific,
actionable recommendations. Show the value of your recommendations
(assuming they are adopted.) Finally, define metrics that the organization
can put in place to monitor the process on an ongoing basis and the analyses
they might use.
The format of the final group report can be either a written report or a
presentation. (You should select the format which best meets the needs of
your client organization.) If you elect to prepare a presentation, plan on
delivering that presentation to your client organization in person and
invite one of the faculty or TA's to attend the presentation. Be
constructive and helpful in your report. Adopt a professional attitude, and
think of the organization you are assisting as a client.
We will adhere to the following project milestones as a means of maintaining
steady progress on the project:
February 14/15: Submit a one-page description of your target organization,
the process you wish to analyze and the name and title of the primary
contact at the organization. By this time, you should have made initial
contact with the organization and have received approval from them to
conduct the project.
March 20/21: Submit a (maximum) five-page paper describing your first-pass analysis of the problem and process you are studying. Include a clear
problem statement, a description of the process (including process
flowcharts if appropriate), a description of the tools that you expect to
apply and the data you expect to collect for further analysis of the
problem, and a brief outline of your plan to complete the project. Upon
review of these papers, we may ask some teams to meet with us to clarify
project focus and/or direction.
May 2 - 10: Written reports are due on May 2nd. You should submit copies of the report to both Professor Anctil and Dr. Beckman as well as to your client. Final presentations may be made during the week of May 2-10 (or before!) Please schedule presentations through Clark Howard who will coordinate schedules with faculty members.
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