capella MBA6022 unit 1 assignment 1 latest 2016 feb.
This assignment helps you develop the skills to master the following course competencies:
- Develop innovative and sustainable solutions to strategic and global operations management challenges.
- Apply theories, models, and practices of global operations management to address business problems.
- Communicate in a manner that is professional and consistent with expectations for members of the business professions.
Activity Overview
In your assignments throughout this course, you will build an operations improvement plan (OIP) based on the real-world example of the Toyota Motor Corporation’s recent product failure crisis. The essential purpose of an OIP is to provide the rationale and data to support a change proposal for a particular organizational process that could benefit from improvement. It is a formal recommendation presented to an audience of organizational leaders. The OIP contains data-based descriptions of the existing problems and presents ideas for effectively modifying the organizational process. At the core of an OIP are a variety of tools that can be used to both analyze findings and present them for an executive audience.
If you have not already done so, take some time now to read all of the assignments for this course. Each of the first five assignments represents a component of a typical OIP. For the final assignment, you will compile your work to deliver a finalized OIP, incorporating updates and focusing on the message you want to deliver to the organizational leaders (in this case, the leaders at Toyota Motor Corporation).
Note that several case studies and library resources that address the Toyota accelerator crisis have been assigned throughout the course. These materials should give you a starting point for your research, but it will be necessary for you to conduct further independent research on the Toyota crisis in order to build your OIP. The Capella library is a recommended source of scholarly and professional information on the subject.
Activity Instructions
For this assignment, complete the following:
- Using your preliminary research, identify several of Toyota’s existing organizational processes at the time of the accelerator crisis. You will be developing an OIP that would replace some (or one) of these processes.
- For each process you identify, write a short summary addressing the following specific topics. Your analyses should be as thorough as possible. Be sure to cite your resources for this information.
- Importance: What is the importance of the process to the Toyota organization?
- Scope: What is the scope of this process (what is the breadth of its reach)?
- Parties involved: What customers, as well as internal and external suppliers, are affected by this
- process?
- Priority: What is the timeliness or urgency for resolving the issues involved in this process?
- Benefits: What is the overall impact or benefit for Toyota in improving this process?
- Cost: What are the costs to Toyota if the process is not improved?
- Select one of the processes you have identified as needing improvement to use as the basis for your operations improvement plan (OIP). Select a process that lends itself to an in-depth analysis and that is important to the Toyota corporation. Be sure to focus on a process that you will be able to evaluate and address within the scope of your OIP, given the relatively short duration of this course. Take into account the amount of time required to complete the OIP.
- Explain why you think this process should be addressed, focusing on your analysis of its importance to the organization and how the process would benefit from improvement.
Submission Requirements
- Written communication:Written communication is free of errors that detract from the overall message.
- APA formatting: Resources and citations are formatted according to APA (6th edition) style and formatting.
- Resources:Minimum of 2 sources required.
- Font and font size: Times New Roman, 12-point.
Refer to the Process Identification Scoring Guide to ensure that you meet the grading criteria for this assignment.
Note: Your instructor may also use the Writing Feedback Tool to provide feedback on your writing. In the tool, click the linked resources for helpful writing information.
- Apply theories, models, and practices of global operations management to address business problems.
- Integrate operations management analyses into general business management planning and decision making.
- Communicate in a manner that is professional and consistent with expectations for members of the business professions.
Activity Instructions
Based on the information you gathered in your process identification assignment in Unit 1, you selected a process to carry forward through the remainder of your Operations Improvement Plan (OIP) project. The process selected should lend itself to an in-depth analysis and should be important to Toyota.
In this assignment, write a report analyzing the organizational problem and the process you have identified for your OIP. Outline your process improvement idea, including the following elements:
- Problem statement:What exactly needs to be improved? Use problem framing and cause-and-effect analysis to develop a brief, preliminary problem statement. Note: You will expand your problem statement in the Unit 3 assignment.
- Background of the issue: Detail relevant historical data, including how long the problem has been occurring, and what it is costing the organization. Note: You are not expected to provide specific data results at this early stage of your investigation.
- Implications: What could happen if the problem continues as it is? What could happen if the process is improved? Outline both tangible and intangible pros and cons for improving the issue or ignoring it. Identify some potential general business results and impacts on business relationships.
- Desired outcome: How will your new process be different from the old? What competitive advantages will it yield? How will it impact stakeholders? Consider the cost-benefits of the process improvement, estimating how much will it cost the organization and outlining how costs will be offset by the benefits derived.
Submission Requirements
- Written communication: Written communication is free of errors that detract from the overall message.
- APA formatting: Resources and citations are formatted according to APA (6th edition) style and formatting.
- Resources:Minimum of 1 source required.
- Font and font size: Times New Roman, 12-point.
Review the Process Improvement Scoring Guide to make sure you have met all of the criteria of this assignment.
Note:Your instructor may also use the Writing Feedback Tool to provide feedback on your writing. In the tool, click the linked resources for helpful writing information.
capella MBA6022 unit 3 assignment 1 latest 2016 feb.
- Develop innovative and sustainable solutions to strategic and global operations management challenges.
- Apply theories, models, and practices of global operations management to address business problems.
- Integrate operations management analyses into general business management planning and decision making.
- Communicate in a manner that is professional and consistent with expectations for members of the business professions.
Activity Instruction
You have examined and broadly identified the organizational problem you will address in your OIP and have begun to identify the new process you would propose to address it. The next critical step is to refine your problem statement by defining and demonstrating the problem and process in detail. There are a number of tools you can use to do this. Two of the most useful are the cause-and-effect diagram and the process flowchart.
For this assignment, complete the following:
- Create a cause-and-effect diagram to identify, analyze, and graphically depict all potential causes related to the problem, in order to uncover its root causes.
- Create a graphic flowchart that briefly details all of the steps you will need to implement in your new process, over time. Identify what this flowchart reveals about the following:
- Previously unidentified yet important steps.
- Products or services that should have been undergoing quality checks but were not.
- Instances in the old process when critical information was not shared among all involved people and functions.
- Create a before-and-after flowchart that illustrates the process that was used before your proposed improvements and what it might look like after your recommendations are incorporated.
- Based on the preliminary problem statement you developed in Unit 2, briefly describe the scope of your process improvement objective. For this assignment, focus on only one of the contributing causes of the problem.
- Write a refined version of your problem statement based on what you have learned about your objective by using the diagram and flowchart tools.
Submission Requirements
- Written communication:Written communication is free of errors that detract from the overall message.
- APA formatting:Resources and citations are formatted according to APA (6th edition) style and formatting.
- Font and font size: Times New Roman, 12-point.
Review the Refining the Problem Statement Scoring Guide to make sure you have met all of the criteria of this assignment.
Note:Your instructor may also use the Writing Feedback Tool to provide feedback on your writing. In the tool, click the linked resources for helpful writing information.
capella MBA6022 unit 4 assignment 1 latest 2016 feb.
- Develop innovative and sustainable solutions to strategic and global operations management challenges.
- Apply theories, models, and practices of global operations management to address business problems.
- Integrate operations management analyses into general business management planning and decision making.
- Communicate in a manner that is professional and consistent with expectations for members of the business professions.
Activity Instructions
There are two parts to this assignment.
Part 1:Continue your analysis of the organizational problem and the process you will propose in your OIP by researching, collecting, and verifying further data. Complete the following:
- Address the following questions, as well as any other new questions you encounter in your research:
- Does any information from the cause-and-effect diagram or the flowcharts you created in Unit 3 seem to point to a particular cause?
- Does your cause-and-effect diagram conflict with your flowchart? If so, how?
- Does the cause-and-effect diagram reveal any process steps that were not previously documented?
- Do you need to do further research on any causes identified in the cause-and-effect diagram?
- Is there a key stakeholder who might have additional or updated feedback for the process flowchart? If so, identify the position (or role) of the stakeholder and describe what he or she might say.
- Does any of this information change or impact your problem statement?
- Update the before-and-after flowchart you initially created in Unit 3, changing the information based on your new findings, focused on the causes of the organizational problem. Write a summary describing your revisions to the flowchart. Describe how (if at all) your problem statement is impacted by the revisions. Include copies of both the original flowchart and the revised version within the text of your paper.
Part 2:The tool that you use to measure the effectiveness of your new process will make a difference in defining and quantifying your outcomes. For this part of your assignment, complete the following:
- Research various measurement strategies that you might use for your OIP.
- Develop a measurement strategy that enables you to measure the improvements your proposed process will offer. Your measurement strategy should help you determine whether the results are actually positive and ensure that your process does not have an unanticipated negative impact elsewhere. Note that you may need to revise your measurement strategy as more historical data is gathered.
- Identify what types of quantitative or qualitative measures you will employ in your measurement strategy, including the following:
- An analysis of potential quantitative and qualitative measurement strategies that would apply to your OIP.
- A description of the qualitative or quantitative measure (or measures) you have chosen.
- A description of how often the improvement results are measured when using this strategy.
Submission Requirements
- Written communication: Written communication is free of errors that detract from the overall message.
- APA formatting: Resources and citations are formatted according to APA (6th edition) style and formatting.
- Resources:Minimum of 2 sources required.
- Font and font size:Times New Roman, 12-point.
Review the Management Strategy Scoring Guide to make sure you have met all of the criteria of this assignment.
Note:Your instructor may also use the Writing Feedback Tool to provide feedback on your writing. In the tool, click the linked resources for helpful writing information.
capella MBA6022 unit 5 assignment 1 latest 2016 feb.
- Apply theories, models, and practices of global operations management to address business problems.
- Integrate operations management analyses into general business management planning and decision making.
- Communicate in a manner that is professional and consistent with expectations for members of the business professions.
Activity Instructions
In this assignment, you will build support for your OIP by collecting and evaluating data. Then you will update the completed portions of your OIP based on your results. Complete the following to prepare for this assignment:
- Start by researching and identifying data collection tools that would be appropriate for your OIP.
- Select one appropriate tool and use it to collect your data. It may not be possible to collect actual data for your OIP within the time constraints and scope of this course. Instead, you may need to make assumptions about the data you would expect to collect.
- Evaluate the data to draw relevant information from your results.
- Analyze how your results enhance, support, or change the portions of the OIP you have already developed (the problem statement, flowchart, measurement strategy, and anticipated recommendations).
- Finally, modify your OIP, based on your findings.
Then, write a paper that includes the following:
- A brief evaluation of the most appropriate tools and techniques for collecting real or anticipated data for your OIP.
- An explanation of why the data collection tool you have chosen is best suited for your OIP. Include the following as appendices to your paper:
- A prototype (or template) of the tool proposed.
- A realistic (either real or simulated) data sample using your collection tool.
- A description of your data collection process. If you are doing a simulated data collection, describe the process you would have used.
- A summary describing how the data results enhance, support, or change the following:
- The problem statement.
- The flowchart.
- The measurement strategy.
- Your anticipated recommendations.
Submission Requirements
- Written communication: Written communication is free of errors that detract from the overall message.
- APA formatting:Resources and citations are formatted according to APA (6th edition) style and formatting.
- Resources:Minimum of 2 sources required.
- Font and font size:Times New Roman, 12-point.
Review the OIP Implementation Scoring Guide to make sure you have met all of the criteria of this assignment.
Note: Your instructor may also use the Writing Feedback Tool to provide feedback on your writing. In the tool, click the linked resources for helpful writing information.
capella MBA6022 unit 6 assignment 1 latest 2016 feb.
- Develop innovative and sustainable solutions to strategic and global operations management challenges.
- Apply theories, models, and practices of global operations management to address business problems.
- Integrate operations management analyses into general business management planning and decision-making.
- Communicate in a manner that is professional and consistent with expectations for members of the business professions.
Activity Instruction
In this assignment, you will submit your final operations improvement plan (OIP). Your final OIP should be divided into five basic components:
- Process Identification.
- Process Improvement.
- Defining the Problem Statement.
- Measurement Strategy.
- Data Collection and Evaluation Tools.
You have developed each of these components as individual assignments and you have updated them as your OIP has developed. Take into consideration all of the research and groundwork you have completed thus far. Incorporate feedback from previous assignments as well as the tools, techniques, and methodologies you have examined throughout the course. Finalize your comprehensive OIP as if you were to present it as a formal recommendation to the organizational leaders of the Toyota Motor Corporation. Focus your writing appropriately for that audience.
Your final OIP should include the following elements:
- A problem statement, including an overview of the Toyota recall crisis, with a brief history and description of the situation.
- A description of the key challenge or problem you have chosen to address in Toyota’s organizational processes, and an analysis of its organizational impact, based on theories and models of global operations management.
- An executive summary of the collected and processed data (actual data, if possible, or assumed data, if necessary).
- A cost-benefit analysis based on your data.
- A description of your innovative and sustainable solution that reflects strategic global operations management concepts and practices.
- Your recommendations for supporting the improvement of the selected process, based on practices of global operations management.
- An explanation of the data or findings that validates your recommendations.
- The visuals, diagrams, and flowcharts you have developed to support and integrate your analysis into general business management planning and decision-making processes.
- A conclusion.
- A comprehensive reference list.
Submission Requirements
- Written communication: Written communication is free of errors that detract from the overall message.
- APA formatting: Resources and citations are formatted according to APA (6th edition) style and formatting.
- Resources:Minimum of 4 sources required.
- Length of paper: 5–10 typed, double-spaced pages.
- Font and font size: Times New Roman, 12-point.
Note: Your instructor may also use the Writing Feedback Tool to provide feedback on your writing. In the tool, click the linked resources for helpful writing information.
