Operations and Project Management: A Review and Critique

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Student Name/ID
Unit No/Title Unit 16- Operations and Project management
Cohort Jan18 Term/Group
Assignment Number Assessor
Submission date Date 1stssss
submission
Re-submission date Date 2nd submission

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Table of Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................3
LO1 Review and critique the effectiveness of operations management principles......................................4
P1. Conduct a review and critique of the implementation of operations management principles within
an organisational context.........................................................................................................................4
M1. Review and critique the implementation of operations management in relation to Six Sigma
methodology and Lean principles............................................................................................................5
LO2 Apply the concept of continuous improvement in an operational context...........................................7
P2. Prepare a continuous improvement plan based on the review and critique of operations
management principles within an organisational context.........................................................................7
M2. Analyse the effectiveness of a continuous improvement plan using appropriate theories, concepts
and model................................................................................................................................................8
LO3 Apply the project life cycle (PLC) to a given context.........................................................................9
P3. Apply each stage of the PLC to a given project. Producing necessary supporting documentation for
completing the project e.g. a business case, project plan, work breakdown structure..............................9
M3. Analyse the rationale for the project methodologies, tools and leadership within the PLC for the
given project..........................................................................................................................................10
LO4 Review and critique the application of the PLC used in a given project............................................11
P4. Review and critique the effectiveness of the PLC in application to the chosen project using
appropriate theories, concepts and models.............................................................................................11
M4. Critically analyse how the use of appropriate theories, concepts and models in the PLC will
differentiate between the large and small-scale projects........................................................................12
Conclusion.................................................................................................................................................13
References.................................................................................................................................................14

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Introduction
The report aims to develop an understanding of the management operations theory as a function
of the organisation which uses modern techniques and technology. The report discusses key
factors and principles which enable the effective critique of the operation of the organisation as a
function. Various fundamental organisations management techniques are also used in the
research to understand the working of a particular organisation, Sunshine Company, which deals
in making energy and soft drinks in the market. The report is used to gain and develop
knowledge and understanding the operations of a certain organisation. The organisation taken as
an example clears the working of private organisation and their operational function in the
system. The role of operations, operations management and planning of operations and the
project life cycle is discussed and elaborated in the report.

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Part 1
LO1 Review and critique the effectiveness of operations management principles.
P1. Conduct a review and critique of the implementation of operations management
principles within an organisational context.
The implementation of operations management, there are some key features that need to be taken
care of for reaching and achieving the goals. These strategies are implemented in the
organisation to be taken care of the operations and manage them according to the need of the
employees. These goals are met through understanding the needs and principles which are
followed by the organisation to achieving the desired goals. In an organisational context of
Sunshine Company, the main aim of the company is to generate the best quality of energy drinks
as required by the customers (Yadav & Desai, 2016). The operational principles mainly deal with
providing a proper path and visibility to the operations which happen in the organisation. There
are nine main principles of operations management, which can be followed by the organisation
to achieve the required goals.
 Reality: it deals with and states that the organisation has to deal with the overall
problems that are being faced by it. The organisation, not only has to improve the
techniques but should also focus on the way of implementing those techniques in the
organisational context of Sunshine Company.
 Humility: The managers of the Sunshine Company should understand the limitations of
the trial and error process, which is used for determining better techniques for achieving
the desired goal. This operational principle saves time, money and works labour which is
used in performing the operations in the organisation.
 Organisation: The operations of the organisation in interconnected and dependent on
each other and. The factors affecting these operations needs to be consistent like the taste
of the drinks etc. and predictable. If the operations fail to interconnect or process in the
organisational context, the organisation would not be able to achieve any profit.
 Accountability: The individual working in the organisation needs to be accountable for
the work that needs to be done or in process. The manager of the Sunshine Company

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should follow the rules and metrics which are used to analyse the performance of the
employee in the organisation.
 Success: The production facility is responsible for the success when it comes to the
increase in the sales for the organisation. To follow the success rate of the organisation,
the interest and feedbacks of the customers should always be taken into account by the
organisation.
 Causality: Solving a problem of the organisation is not the final call that the problem has
left, but the cause of the problem can affect the organisation even when the problem is
solved. Therefore, the causes of the problems have to be removed from the organisational
system to prevent the system from causality.
 Change: New theories and techniques in operation function should be implemented in an
organisation to gain the best outcome for the company. The change ensures the stability
of the organisation for the long run. Change can include operational management
techniques and the manufacturing operation of the product of the organisation.
 Quality Control: The quality of the product sold to the customer by the organisation
should always be on the mark unrelated to its cost. The drinks made by the Sunshine
Company should be fresh and refreshing for the customer every time they have it. This
helps the organisation to maintain its dignity in the market.
 Knowing the Competition: the practices made the competitors within the same market
should be analysed to determine knowledge about the competitor. This technique helps
the organisation to improve the product and provide the customer with a better product
and affordable prices.
M1. Review and critique the implementation of operations management about Six Sigma
methodology and Lean principles.
The Six Sigma and Lean principles are used in the operational management activities to improve
the implementations of the operational management activities in the organisation. The Six Sigma
methodology is used in the organisation to improve the quality of the operations by eliminating
the errors and defects and helps the organisation to reduce the cost and save time for
implementing the operations in the organisation. This process is an expensive process that is
implemented in the organisation, but it pays off for itself once it is used in the organisation

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(Rehacek, 2017). The Lean principles, on the other hand, are an effective model which is used
for managing the teams which implement the operation management techniques in the
organisational system of Sunshine Company. The Six Sigma works on the following two main
principles in operations management:
 Executive supports: These techniques only use quality of engineers and workers in the
organisation to perform the operations of the company. It is said to be a classical quality
management technique as the executives involved in the operations are highly trained
and comes at a high cost to the organisation.
 Top-down training: The Six Sigma uses the outside experts for consulting the
organisation for a short period for describing the working and operations of the
organisation. It ensures that the worker and the experts are given the training for the Six
Sigma activities according to which the organisational system and operations will be
worked.
The Lean principles have five important activities which are needed to be performed in the
organisational system to implement the operational management activities.
 Identify Value: the value of the team’s work should be identified by the manager of the
organisation to ensure the working capacity of the team members. It also determines the
desired work progress and achievement of the team in the operational system.
 Map value Stream: It is said to determine the path for the product to be sold out to the
customer. Once the value of the team is determined, the focus shifts to determining the
path from which the product will be transferred to the customer.
 Create Flow: Flow is considered as the key concept to ensure the smooth delivery of the
product designed and created by the team to the customer. The goal is to achieve a
smooth delivery of the product from the receiving station to the delivering destination.
 Establish Pull: This feature is used to ensure that the product produced is of good value
and needed by the customer (Volkov & Kuzina, 2016). Also, it ensures that the new task
for the team is only taken when the team is done with the previous operations of the
organisation.
 Seek Constant Improvements: The lean principles are constantly improving and
working on the concept of improvement of the techniques. It ensures the growth and

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improvements of the techniques that are used in the system to perform the operations of
the organisation.
LO2 Apply the concept of continuous improvement in an operational context.
P2. Prepare a continuous improvement plan based on the review and critique of operations
management principles within an organisational context.
The improvement plans are based on the changes that are required by the organisation to deal
with the limitation and drawback of the operational management principles in the system. The
system works on various goals and improvement plans that need to be achieved by the
organisation for reaching the success point (Rasnacis & Berzisa, 2017). The Sunshine Company
can improve production by following certain methods, which involve the operations management
principles.
 The organisation can improve their production by implementing the features of operation
management principles. The principle deals with the techniques that are used in the
organisational system to ensure the perfect implementation of the new technologies in the
operations of the organisation.
 The trial and error process should be removed to make the improvement plan cost-effective.
For continuous improvements in the organisation, the assigned work to the employees should
be completed on time and according to the requirements by the client.
 The factors affecting the solved problems should also be corrected to ensure that the problem
is permanently dissolved for the given organisational system.
 Involvement of new studies and theories should be included in the improvement plans to
make sure the perfect functioning of the operational system of the organisation.
 The Quality and the competition should also be taken into account in improvement plans to
set a goal for the employees of the organisation that is needed to be reached to make the
operations of the organisation more effective and efficient in the market.

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M2. Analyse the effectiveness of a continuous improvement plan using appropriate
theories, concepts and model.
The operational management principles always need upgradation from time to time in the
organisation. The product life-cycle is also affected by the operations and its management
techniques in the organisational system of Sunshine Company. The organisation needs an
innovative and effective approach to implement the operations in the system for making the
system more efficient. The approaches that can be used in continuous improvement plan are:
 Business Process Reengineering (BPR): The technique involves the redesigning of the
core processes for the organisation which are used for the implementation of the
operation on the organisational system (Pugna et al., 2016). Every technique and methods
that are used before are discarded, and implementation of new techniques and methods
takes place from scratch. The technique of BPR increases the innovation and improves
certain methods and factors of the organisation dramatically.
 Sustainability: This technique focuses on the environmental regulation of the
organisation, which states that the organisation should operate under pressure as well as
reduce their effects on the environment around them for long term growth. These
problems affect all the levels of operations from beginning to the end (Patwardhan et al.,
2016). Therefore, some techniques are defined under this category to overcome the
drawbacks and to propose an improvement plan based on the operations management
principles for Sunshine Company.
 Behavioural Operations Management: This is considered as the most recent and
trending researches that are done for the organisation for the improvement plans. The
study understands the factors that influence the result and functioning of the organisation
and its authorities (Matějka et al., 2016). The problem-solving methods for the authorities
are used in this system to improve the working efficiency of the organisation.

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Part 2
LO3 Apply the project life cycle (PLC) to a given context
P3. Apply each stage of the PLC to a given project. Producing necessary supporting
documentation for completing the project, e.g. a business case, project plan, work
breakdown structure.
Sunshine company is focusing on developing a new product, which is an energy drink and is
combined with natural spring filtered water. To develop and launch a product, the company
needs to follow some procedure. Applying project life cycle can be helpful in the project
initiation and closure.
 Project initiation- Sunshine is focused on bringing an energy drink, which is combined
with natural spring water to the market because energy drink is very much in demand.
For producing an energy drink, it has to be different from the ones which are already
present in the market. This is the reason why sunshine thought of combining it with
natural spring water to make it different. If the product is seen as a boom in an industry, it
can take the company to a higher level and be very beneficial for the company growth
(Alvarez-Dionisi et al., 2016). But the time taken for this will be slightly high, as it
requires natural spring water, which needs to be filtered and processed, thus increasing
the cost and the time resource. The only risk involved here is the investment done by the
investors if the product didn’t do well in the market.
 Project Planning- Two more machines would be needed for the proper mixing of the
fruits and spring water to have an energy drink with a good nutritional value. Firstly,
machines need to be brought, then an extended area is needed near the spring water
filtration area. This will help in reducing the cost of transportation. And afterwards,
skilled labours are needed for the making of the energy drink which should be followed
by the packaging department and the production department.
 Project Execution- Every new and old employee should be briefed about the importance
of launching the energy drink and how it would be beneficial for the company. Also,
making them know about the importance of maintaining quality, as poor quality can be

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bad for the company’s image (Barrios et al., 2016). For the quality maintenance, bottle
inspectors, filled bottle inspection and flow diverter valve can be done. This will help in
ensuring that the drink is filled in a clean bottle and is pressurized under a pre-set
temperature.
 Project closure- Project closure is very important; this helps in knowing about the
resources which were used and not used and also about the team results. Project closure
aims at providing the end documentation for what all changes have been made during the
project and what products have been used and what all resources are needed for it.
Table 1 Work breakdown structure for the development of a new product
Activities Duration
Project Management
Business case and documentation 1 day
Feasibility study 1 day
Project justification 1 day
Appointing project team 1 day
Project value estimation 1 day
Proposed project models 1 day
Project planning
creating project 1 day
Creating quality product 1 day
Creating acceptance plan 1 day
Implementing communication 1 day
Create procurement 1 day
Contract the supplier 1 day
Milestone reached 1 day
Project execution
Time management 1 day
Change management 1 day
Cost management 1 day
Quality management 1 day

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Risk management 1 day
Acceptance management 1 day
Communication management 1 day
Milestone reached 0 day
Project closure
Closure criteria 1 day
Release plan 1 day
Project closure 1 day
Utilisation report 1 day
Post implementation 1 day
Applying the above stages to the sunshine company will help with the making and launching of
the energy drink in the competitive market and will make them out stand and beat the other
energy drink providers.
Activities 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
Project Management
Business case and documentation
Feasibility study
Project justification
Appointing project team
Project value estimation
Proposed project models
Project planning
creating project
Creating quality product
Creating acceptance plan
Implementing communication
Create procurement
Contract the supplier
Milestone reached
Project execution
Time management
Change management
Cost management
Quality management
Risk management
Acceptance management
Communication management
Milestone reached
Project closure
Closure criteria
Release plan
Project closure
Utilisation report
Figure 1Gantt chart for the WBS for the development of a new product

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M3. Analyse the rationale for the project methodologies, tools and leadership within the
PLC for the given project.
There are various methodologies and tools which have been developed for the project life cycle.
Some of them, which can be useful for the sunshine company while making an energy drink and
launching it in the market, are agile methodology and Prince2 Methodology. These two
methodologies are more suitable for the production of energy drink. Agile methodology focuses
on breaking the whole project in the form of cycle. In this, every step has its particular life cycle
which consists of plan, design, build, test and review. It is very helpful, as the divided parts can
be worked on side by side and do not require or need to wait for the first step to finish. The next
is the Prince2 methodology. This is similar to that of agile methodology; the only difference in
this is, it follows principles (Enshassi et al., 2016). This enables the organisation to have a set of
the small project which can be combined in making and completing a complex project.
Along with these methodologies, there are some tools for every stage of the project life cycle.
For the initial phase, the tools are Gantt project or Google Docs. With the use of Google docs,
many higher authorities can be connected to a single document in real-time. Gantt chart will help
in tracking the dates on which date what part of the project needs to be done or is completed. For
the planning phase, stories can be used for the agile method; this will help in dividing the project
in a smaller project which can be easily worked upon.
Along with the wireframes can be used. This will help in developing the design of the product
which needs to be launched. For the execution phase, Jira can be used, which is very famous for
the agile method. In this, the team can track their movements, which include sprints and defects
as well (Girichidis et al., 2016). For the last step, Basecamp can be used for project closure. It
focuses on racking the task list, who is assigned to which task and which all tasks have been
completed. It is good for privatizing issues.