BSO304: Operations for Competitive Advantage: Charles Thornton (Electives Information)

1. Operations ForCompetitive
Advantage
Charles Thornton

2. Module Aims
This module aims to provide participants
with an informed approach to operations
management, allowing them to
contextualise problems in goods and
service industry sectors. To enable
participants to present and implement
feasible solutions to develop operations
based competitive advantage.

3. The Module
• A strategic focus to operations
• Set in the context of other disciplines
Accounting
and Finance
People
Management
Product
or Service
Development
Marketing
Supply Chain management
Technical and
IT Functions
OPERATIONS
MANAGEMENT
THE
TRANSFORMATION
PROCESS

4. Topics
• Operations Strategy
• Capacity, Demand and
Queuing
• Project Management
• Quality inc. Service Quality
• Process Design,
Management and
Improvement including
Layout and Flow
• Service Encounter
• Sustainable Operations
• Employee Management for
Competitive Advantage in
Operations
• Supply Chain
• Lean and JIT
• Balanced Scorecard &
Performance Measurement
• Failure and Maintenance

5. Delivery, Assessment and
Prerequisites
• Taught in:
 2 x 2 hour blocks each week
 Guest Speaker(s)
• Assessment:
 50% Coursework – 2 pieces
 50% Exam
• Prerequisites
 None

6. Reasons fortaking the
Module
• If you are interested in career in operations which
tends to be the largest part of any organisation –
often increasing opportunities
• Operations is relevant to any part of business
which produces a good or service:
 which includes HR, marketing and finance
 they face operations issues such as quality, capacity
and demand and process management
 indeed whether they are classified as operations or
support functions depends organisational boundaries

7. FurtherInformation
• Email:
charles.thornton@plymouth.ac.uk
• Telephone 01752 585695