BUSI48901 TIMED ASSESSMENT PAPER PART B

Module Name:                      Management in Organizations (main assessment paper)

Module Code:                       BUSI48901

Examination Date:               Friday 19^th November 2021

Time:                                    Start time: 09:00 (UK time); Duration: 6 hours

Submission Deadline:         Friday 19^th November 2021 15:00 (UK time)

Inclusive Assessment: Online timed assessments have 100% extra time added to enable all reasonable adjustments to be accommodated while working online. If you have a Statement of Access, you should complete the examination in line with the adjustments identified in your statement.

INSTRUCTIONS TO CANDIDATES

Type of Assessment: Open Book Timed Assessment. You may make use of any material that was provided within the module as well as any external academic source. If you use external sources, these need to be referenced. You must not copy and paste material from any source apart from diagrams.

Honesty and Integrity: We expect you to act with integrity in undertaking this Examination in line with the Student Code of Conduct and the Academic Irregularities Policy. All submissions will be submitted to Turnitin for originality checking which includes checking against all other students’ work.

You must NOT:

• Copy and paste material from any source. (Note, unless indicated otherwise in your examination paper, it is permissible to copy and paste diagrams as long as these are correctly cited and absolutely necessary for the purposes of completing your answer).
• Collaborate with others in completing the assessment.
• Share any aspect of your work (e.g. notes, calculations, answers, sources) with other students by screenshare, social media, telephone, or email.

Materials Provided: The following are provided in the Assessment (Online) content unit in the Module Learning Room.   

• Instructions and guidance for the Assessment
• A description of your responsibilities
• A copy of the Assessment Paper
• A copy of your NBS Online Answer Booklet (YOU MUST USE THIS ANSWER BOOKLET TO SUBMIT YOUR ANSWERS)
• The following additional digital items are provided: Present value table and Ratios formula sheet

PLEASE NOTE THAT THERE MAY BE QUESTION SPECIFIC INSTRUCTIONS INCLUDED ON THE PAPER BELOW TO HELP YOU COMPLETE ALL ELEMENTS OF EACH QUESTION ONLINE.

Word Count: The total maximum word count for this Assessment is: 2500 words

The following penalties will be applied (NBS Word Count Policy-Online Examination) if the Assessment word count is exceeded.

• Additional words up to 500 words, the overall grade for the piece of work will be reduced by 1 grade point (e.g. UG 2.1-Mid to 2.1-Low; PG Commendation-Mid to Commendation-Low);
• Additional work exceeds 500 words, the overall grade for the piece of work will be reduced by 3 grade points (e.g. 2.1-Mid to 2.2 Mid; PG Commendation-Mid to Pass-Mid).
• These penalties will be applied even if the reduced grade is below a Pass grade.

All non-narrative elements included in the work that require a written description ARE EXCLUDED from the word count. These include: calculations, tables, charts or diagrams.

Citing and Referencing Requirements:

1. In-text citations are encouraged
2. NO reference list in Harvard style is required.
3. Appendices should NOT be submitted and will NOT be graded.

Submitting your Answer Booklet:

All required assessment answers MUST be typed in your copy of the NBS Online Answer Booklet.

You MUST submit your answer booklet to the required module Dropbox folder by the Submission Deadline stated above.

You should plan to submit with sufficient time to account for circumstances that are outside your control. Should you be prevented from submitting and miss the deadline due to such circumstances, then you should:

• email a description of the problem to Saeed Taheri taheri@ntu.ac.uk or Caroline Chartres caroline.chartres@ntu.ac.uk (include a screenshot or photograph of the issue) and if possible, include a copy of your Answer Booklet in the email.
• submit your Answer Booklet to the Dropbox folder as soon as you are able to.

Distribution of Marks and Overall Word Count in the Assessment: 

Below you will find, for each section of your Assessment, the distribution of marks and approximate suggested word count. You are advised to use the marks allocated to each question within a section to determine how to use the overall word count.

END OF INSTRUCTIONS

Part B – Operations

Answer one from two questions (35 marks in total)

Question 1 (35 marks)

1. Compare 2 case companies below and discuss how the following aspects contrast:

• service content,
• order winning criteria,
• capacity planning
• buffering choice (making reference to the law of variability buffering).

 (10 marks)

1. Discuss how smartphone apps (such as Airbnb) have disrupted the trade-off choices traditionally distinguishing choices in the hotel industry. In your discussion explain how the law of variability pooling is related to the improvement in both service times and cost.

(10 marks)

1. Discuss how the concepts of the focused factory relates to Fishers supply chain model and why there is a tendency for supply chains to favour efficiency over responsiveness. Briefly discuss how Covid-19 had implications on supply chain objectives and therefore positioning in the model.

(10 marks)

1. Using a case study covered in class discuss what distinguishes lean and agile strategies and how they can co-exist in the same supply chain.

(5 marks)

Case companies:

Case 1- Ski Verbier Exclusive

Ski Verbier Exclusive Ltd is a provider of ‘up-market’ ski holidays in the Swiss winter sports resort of Verbier. With 23 years’ experience of organising holidays, it looks after luxury properties in the resort that are rented from their owners for letting to Ski Verbier Exclusive’s clients. The properties vary in size and the configuration of their rooms, but the flexibility to reconfigure the rooms to cater for the varying requirements of client groups is important. The personal concierge service begins from the moment the client books. The company’s specialist staff have all lived and worked in Verbier and take care of all details of the trip well in advance, from organizing airport transfers to booking a private ski instructor, from arranging private jet or helicopter flights to Verbier’s local airport, to making lunch reservations in the best mountain restaurants. The company’s busiest period is mid-December to mid-April. That is when all the properties that the company manages are full. The rest of the year is not so busy, but the company does offer bespoke summer vacations in some of its properties. These can be either self-catering, or with the full concierge service that clients get in the ski season.

Case 2- Formule 1

Formule 1, a subsidiary of the French Accor group, manages to offer outstanding value by adopting two principles not always associated with hotel operations – standardization and an innovative use of technology. Formule 1 hotels are usually located close to the roads, junctions and cities that make them visible and accessible to prospective customers. All rooms are 9 square metres in area, and are designed to be attractive, functional, comfortable, and soundproof. Most important, they are designed to be easy to clean and maintain. All have the same fittings, including a double bed, an additional bunk-type bed, a wash basin, a storage area, a working table with seat, a wardrobe and a television set. The reception of a Formule 1 hotel is staffed only from 6.30 am to 10.00 am and from 5.00 pm to 10.00 pm. Outside these times an automatic machine sells rooms to credit card users, provides access to the hotel, dispenses a security code for the room and even prints a receipt. Technology is also evident in the washrooms. Showers and toilets are automatically cleaned after each use by using nozzles and heating elements to spray the room with a disinfectant solution and dry it before it is used again. To keep things even simpler, Formule 1 hotels do not include a restaurant, as they are usually located near existing ones. However, a continental breakfast is available, usually between 6.30 am and 10.00 am, and of course on a ‘self-service’ basis!

Question 2 (35 marks)

Beauty Co. is a contract cosmetics company, which manufactures and packs cosmetics and perfumes for other companies. One of its plants operates a filling line which automatically fills plastic bottles with skin cream and seals the bottles with a screw-top cap. The tightness with which the screw-top cap is fixed is an important part of the quality of the filling line process. If the cap is screwed on too tightly, there is a danger that it will crack; if screwed on too loosely, it might come loose when packed. Either outcome could cause leakage of the product during its journey between the factory and the customer. The plant had received some complaints of product leakage which it suspected was caused by inconsistent fixing of the screw-top caps on its filling line. The company decided to take a sample of the bottles coming out of the filling-line process, test them for their ‘tightness’ of the screw tops and plot the results on a control chart. The data and the control chart are as follows:

Graph 1

1. Explain the control chart (graph 1) and making references to it, briefly discuss the relationship between the following concepts:

• Special and common causes of variation
• The upper and lower control limits
• Type I and II errors
• why the process is NOT under control? How the company could bring the process under control?

(13 marks)

1. According to the specification, the tightness of caps must be between 812 and 816, calculate the Process capability and using it discuss:
   1. why the process is not capable?
   2. How the process could become capable, explain it by comparing graphs 1 and 2, and making reference to the PDSA cycle and Kaizen.

(13 marks)

Graph 2

1. Assess how the theory of performance frontiers (illustrated below) relates to the concept of continual improvement.

(9 marks)