B2083 Operation Management Assessment: Diet 1 – Report - 2025

B2083 Assignment Question:

This assignment is based around the context of a small but growing company which has to this point had limited formal application of OM approaches.

The TEA DROPPER was founded in 2020 by four friends from Edinburgh, who create and sell crafted tea products. They began trading in Sep 2021, selling only two products directly to hotels and restaurants. They have quickly built their business and now have 28 staff and sell through a further three routes to market (on-line shop, retail, and wholly owned tea shops).

The ‘TEA DROPPER’ has experienced significant growth in sales, believing that through its core strengths: Super Premium Quality products & Strong branding / Customer Brand awareness that it has real potential to further penetrate the market. However, during this period of growth, the founders have become increasingly aware of internal mistakes, external complaints, and a strong feeling of frustration from their staff about the level of planning and organisation in their wholly owned operating plant.

The TEA DROPPER grew from a micro business that was characterised by informality which meant that any OM issues and needs were dealt with primarily as they emerged. One of the founders has some limited OM experience and has so far been taking the lead on decision making. OM principles and practices have not been formally built into ‘what they do and how they do it.’

The owners now realise that this is a crucial point in the company’s development and have decided to seek assistance in understanding how the design and planning of their operations can help in arresting the difficulties they have already experienced, and position themselves to be in a much better condition to grasp the market opportunities for growth, that they firmly believe exist for the company in the current and future market.

You have been employed as an OM consultant to the ‘TEA DROPPER’ and you are requested to:

• analyse and evaluate the current operating practices, approach to quality & production planning, inventory management, capacity planning, risk management and customer fulfilment.
• provide a set of practical recommendations that will help ‘tea dropper’ gain an appropriate and robust control of their operations.
  integrate insights drawn from current best practice and OM theory.

To complete this study, you will be provided with:

• a word file containing detailed background information on the company and its current situation.
• an excel file containing data on the tea dropper’s operations management and performance, including sales, production performance, inventory data, customer service levels and dashboard KPI’s that highlight performance levels and overall effectiveness.
• It is important to note that for this assignment, OM principles that engage with both the Word and Excel files must be applied, in helping to answer the assignment question. (Data analysis must be part of your answer.)

Your assignment must be written in a report format and should specifically contain the following four sections.

Section 1: Introduction (15%)
Section 2: Operations Design, Location, Flow and Performance (35%)
Section 3: Demand, Capacity, and Inventory (35%)
Section 4: Conclusions (15%)

In this assignment marks for overall quality of presentation, communication and use of sources will be applied into the above categories.

B2083 Marking Criteria

• Section 1: Introduction: Executive summary provides concise overview. Introduction, clearly identifies the task, develops subject and question context.
• Section 2: Case Analysis: Operations Design, Location, Flow and Performance
• Section 3: Data Analysis: Demand, Capacity, and Inventory and performance Dashboard
• Section 4: Conclusion: Develops clear advice in form of priority actions. Advice is consistent with analysis and is supported with evidence.