Supply Chain Management

Overview
The individual project word count is 3000 (excluding references, table of contents, and appendices where used), with +/-10% limits allowed. The project accounts for 100% of your overall module marks. The aim of this individual project is threefold:

• To help students relate the concepts and themes covered in the class to existing supply chain operations;
• To encourage creativity and innovative thinking around supply chain operations management, sustainability and digitalisation based on the analysis of relevant information;
• To enable students to enhance their critical thinking as well as concise and critical writing skills.

Your report needs to be submitted electronically to MyAberdeen. Late submission will attract a mark penalty unless an extension has been approved by the MBA office. Please familiarize yourself with the extenuating circumstances policy and process for submitting a claim.

Detailed guidelines
You will need to apply concepts from the class to analyse or address a specific supply chain problem or issue. This could be the operations and supply chain practices behind the production of a specific item (product or service). You could choose a specific industry or company or product.

Additional resources have been uploaded on MyAberdeen. You are encouraged to consult these resources prior to completing the report.

Students should prepare and submit their reports in the following format:
Font: Verdana or Arial 12 point
Spacing: 1.5 spaced
Margins: Normal (2.5 cm)
Referencing: Harvard citation style

The maximum word count must be adhered to. The penalty for exceeding this limit is a five-mark deduction.
• The actual word count of the assignment must be stated by the student on the first page (cover sheet) of the assignment.
• The overall word count does include citations and quotations.
• The overall word count does not include the references or bibliography at the end of the coursework.
• The word count does not include figures and tables. 

Final report (100% of project mark)

Structure: Your project should be structured in the following sections and the focus should be as per the marks allocated.
Section Details Marks %
1) Introduction and the scenario for the problem and issues you want to address • Guiding the reader what is included in the project; the sequence and a brief explanation of each section
• Description of the specific problem and related issues you want to address 15%

2) Up-to-date literature review with a critical approach • Significance, breadth of sources, criticality, consistent referencing style, tightly connected with the topic, application, and examples for justification 20%

3) Technical platform, relevant challenges, and the scenario after implementation of your solutions • Define the technological platform (or measures) that you think are the most suitable to solve the problem and issues described in Section 1, providing examples and justification using cross-referencing from Section 2.
• Solution(s) after implementation
35%

4) Discussion and conclusions • Summarising
• Compare findings with the literature
• Recommendations for managers
• Limitations and future research recommendations 15%
5) Overall quality • Logically written
• Overall, tightly connected with the question/topic/application
• High quality of referencing
• Tables, figures, and data used 15%

It is expected that you will apply and refer to concepts and frameworks from the module in order to conduct the analysis. You should use organizational examples, large and small, to illustrate your point and highlight key patterns and practices. This means that you will have to do research into practical examples and will need to select reliable information. You are encouraged here to make linkages with the previous sections in terms of the identified supply chain issues, sustainability and technology aspects.

NB. Remember that you have only 3,000 words so you will have to be selective about the issues you cover and the concepts and frameworks that you bring in.

Reference List
You need to clearly reference every source of external material that you use in your work. We expect that you will use a mix of academic sources (beyond the core text) as well as reliable practical sources (e.g. corporate websites and reports, reliable news sites…). Details for referencing can be found in MyAberdeen. Do use HBR-style referencing; therefore, your report should contain a Reference List at the end that is not included in the word count.