Assessment

Brief
Logistics and Supply Chain
Management
UFMFRQ-15-M
(2024 / 2025)

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 Coursework brief

Logistics and Supply Chain Management

UFMFRQ-15-M
_____________________________________________________________________
Your deliverables
Element Weighting Submission Date
1. Group Presentation (20 mins + 10 25% TBA
min questions)
2. Individual Report (2,500 words) 75% TBA
________________________________________________________________________
Please consider the following guidelines to work on your presentation and your report.

The scenario
Your group is responsible to manage a Supply Chain (SC) set in a particular local industry in
Oman (e.g. food, textile and clothing, jewels, construction materials, oil and gas, etc.).
You have a clear understanding of your market (e.g. suppliers, customers, competitors /
domestic or international) and have a clear strategy to monitor and improve the efficiency of
your SC.
Your company could own facilities (e.g. production site, warehouses) and means of transport
(e.g. road vehicles, vessels, aircrafts) or can ask third parties to be in charge of specific
operations across the SC (outsourcing). You can decide to apply green practices to reduce the
environmental impact of your operations, and innovative technologies or business
models/practices to improve the efficiency. In the real world, and especially in bigger
companies and supply chains, you would not be required to manage the whole supply chain on
your own. You would rather be working in a team and would be responsible for a specific
aspect of the supply chain. Therefore, in each group there will be a person responsible for:
 Operations management, including risks, performance, strategy.
 Environmental impact & Green practices.
 New technologies and digitalisation.
 Stakeholder engagement and collaboration.

An excellent MSc level submission will demonstrate innovative thinking, but it is important to
make sure that you are also able to deliver against the following brief.

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The task
Your task is to design a supply chain management plan for your chosen industry and to
provide a clear strategy to manage operations and reach objectives. Your supply chain
management plan will be communicated in two ways:
1. A presentation of your SC structure and strategy, where you will explain your network,
market, costs/times, and your transport strategy; and
2. A written SC management plan.

Getting started
To get started on this task, you will need to:
1. Select an entirely novel Supply Chain – imagine you are working for a company that
does not exist in the real world. You will need to imagine a completely new supply
chain for a specific product.
2. Design the structure (map), including nodes/edges, flows, location of your facilities.
3. Analyse costs, times of your operations.
4. Provide a transport strategy, indicating if you will be using road/rail/shipping/air
freight, when/why, justifying your choices.
5. Operations Management: identify a strategy to improve your SC operations, including
risk evaluation/mitigation, and a performance assessment and monitoring framework
to make sure your SC is working efficiently and in line with your objectives.
6. Sustainability Manager: evaluate the impact of your SC operations on the environment
and define a green strategy. Explain the reason of your choice and provide evidence of
their impact.
7. Innovation Manager: define an innovation strategy to improve the efficiency of your
SC operations, including new technologies, digitalisation, and industry 4.0. Explain the
reason of your choice and provide evidence of their impact.
8. Stakeholder Manager: define a stakeholder engagement and management strategy to
improve collaboration within your supply chain. Explain the role each stakeholder plays,
including their power and influence. Include considerations towards how to enable
collaboration can support circular supply chains OR digitalisation.
Taken together, these requirements will mean that you need to collect evidence to support
your assessment of the market demand, costs, times and potential to operate a commercially
viable SC. For example, if you were proposing to refer to a domestic market, you would be
expected to have researched the potential customers for your specific service at national level
and show understanding of costs and times of each specific activity (e.g. supply, production,
warehousing, transport/delivery).
You may need to consider a range of options before committing to one. Do seek advice from
the module tutors and also discuss your ideas with course colleagues.

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Preparing your SC management plan
Your SC management plan will include the following four components:
 A statement that explains how your SC is designed and operates. For example, if you
were proposing to design a food SC, you would need to explain and justify the
localisation of the nodes, what vehicles / infrastructure and labour you would require,
what your reference market would be, who would be your suppliers, what the nature
of your relationships with and requirements of other agencies (like third party logistics
operators, for example) would be. You are expected to demonstrate understanding of
(i) the structure of the capital and operating costs for your SC; (ii) the conditions that
would indicate sufficient market demand; (iii) the times needed to deliver your
operations; (iv) the quality standards. This component should be agreed by all the
members of the team.
 A statement providing an operations management plan. You will need to provide an
estimate of the price or prices (and times) you would charge for the service/product
based on the costs the SC would incur. You should also be able to provide a risk
assessment and a management strategy and define a framework to evaluate and
monitor your performance across your supply chain. ONLY one member of the team
will be leading on this task.
 A statement that defines a green strategic plan that you would implement to make
your SC greener, evaluating the effect of the proposed practices. This would include a
clear evaluation plan, a strategy and short, medium, long-term planning. ONLY one
member of the team will be leading on this task.
 A statement that defines an innovation plan, and what kind of impact these would
have on your operations. This would include a clear evaluation plan, a strategy and
short, medium, long-term planning. ONLY one member of the team will be leading on
this task.
 A statement that defines a stakeholder engagement and communication plan, and
what role each stakeholder plays in your supply chain, indicating their power and
influence. Considerations towards collaboration among stakeholders to enable circular
supply chains OR digitalisation should be also made. This would include a clear
evaluation plan, a strategy and short, medium, long-term planning. ONLY one member
of the team will be leading on this task.

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Assessment
There are two components to the assessment for this module:

Component A (presentation) - weighting 25%

Group Presentation – 4 students per group (under controlled conditions):
20-minute presentation, with 5 mins per student (plus 10-minute questions).

Assessment date: (TBA)

Group presentation in which you reflect upon your learning of the Logistics & Supply Chain
Management subject matter. Presentations delivered online (or face-to-face – TBC) during
timed slots in the presence of the Academic Staff only. Detailed arrangements (e.g. time &
(virtual) room) will be published nearer the time.

Your oral presentation

 You will make a presentation to pitch your proposal to a panel of assessors.
 Your group will have 20 minutes to make the presentation (you will ideally be presenting
for about five minutes), followed by ten minutes for questions from the panel. You should
coordinate with the other members of your group in order to stay in 20 mins (e.g., ideally
each student should present for about 5 minutes). You and your “group mates” should be
prepared to answer questions from the assessors.
 Your group presentation needs to cover points one to four of the “Getting Started” list.
Give your presentation a clear structure: Introduction, discussion, concluding comments.
Do not put too much text on your presentation but stick to key themes. You must rehearse
your presentation, to ensure you can comfortably deliver it in 20 minutes with pauses, to
allow the audience to take in and think about the point(s) you are making. Be sure there is
a balanced allocation of content and time. Please, refer to the coursework brief and the
appended marking criteria at the end of this document.
 In sum, your presentation should cover the following topics:
- Your industry, competitors, customers, your position in the market against your
competitors.
- A clear structure (map), including nodes/edges, flows, location of your facilities.
- An allocation of costs and times of your operations.
- A transport strategy.
 You will need to be concise and coordinate with the other members of the group/team.
o Practice your presentation beforehand to ensure that you make clear points and
keep to time.

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Component B (coursework) - weighting 75%
Critical Analytical Individual Report of 2,500 words in which you reflect upon the case study
you have presented in Component A (presentation). For this you will draw upon the feedback
you received from the assessors. Every member of the team will be responsible for focusing on
and presenting ONLY ONE of the following themes. The report should cover overall the three
themes, one per student:
 Operations management plan.
 Green strategic plan.
 Innovation plan.
 Stakeholder management plan.

Your written report

Your written report will have to include two parts:

Part 1. Indicative length: 1,000 words.

The first part of your report will present the results of an interview you will carry out with a
professional working in supply chain management. The topic covered by the interview should
be consistent with your role (e.g., questions related to operations OR innovation OR
environment OR stakeholders). The interview will help you understanding the real challenging
professionals face when they want to implement a strategy or make decisions towards a
specific matter.
This part should include:
- A brief literature review of the core theme of the interview, to describe the theme, and
explain what the main challenges are with the implementation of theme 1 OR 2 OR 3
OR 4 in supply chain management – approx. 250 words.
- Methodology used to design the interview and analyse the data, including details on
your interviewee (e.g., role, experience, gender, age, country) - approx. 200 words.
- Results and critical discussion - approx. 400 words.
- Reflections upon your experience conducting the interview and what you have learned -
approx. 150 words.
Your core theme will depend on your role in your supply chain and will be around the following
focal questions:

N
. Your role Your theme
Operations
1
Management Resilient Supply Chains
2 Sustainability Manager Circular Supply Chains
3 Innovation Manager Digitalisation
Stakeholder management in circular supply chains OR digital supply
4
Stakeholder Manager chain

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The questions you will ask will help you understanding what strategy would be more
appropriate and effective for your supply chain (this will inform Part 2 of the report).

Part 2. Indicative length: 1,500words.

The first part should be followed by ONLY one of the following per student, depending on the
“role” each student is covering in the supply chain management team:
 Operations management plan, including Risk evaluation and mitigation and
Performance measurement model (e.g., SCOR + KPIs). Considerations should not be
general, but specific to your supply chain/industry.
 Green strategic plan, including a series of consideration towards the specific
environmental impact of your operations and green practices that you will implement
and why – including a timeline is also encouraged. Considerations should not be
general, but specific to your supply chain/industry.
 Innovation plan, including a series of consideration towards the specific innovative
solutions that you will implement and why – including a timeline is also encouraged.
Considerations should not be general, but specific to your supply chain/industry.
 Stakeholder management plan, including an analysis of your internal/external
stakeholders, their power and interest, and their role to enable innovation and
sustainability (e.g., circular supply chains or digitalisation).

Although the final write-up will be reasonably short, you will need to have carried out
significant research to arrive at a concise and robust explanation of your proposals.

Be prepared to write more than 2,500 words in your initial drafts in order to be able to
provide strong summaries in your final submission. But please, remember that text over the
2,500-word limit in your final submission will not be marked.

You should use appropriate tables and figures to support your explanations.

Your report must be contained within a SINGLE WORD file.

Electronic submission: : (TBA) .

Such a report would normally be written wholly in the 3rd person (he, she, it….)
An indication of what your report should include:
i) Title page.
ii) Executive Summary – optional.
iii) Acknowledgements – optional.

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iv) Glossary of Terms – optional.
v) Contents page, showing numbered sections including appendices and page
numbers.
vi) Introduction.
vii) Findings and critical analysis – this is the main part of your report where you will
reflect upon:
 Practitioner’s perspective and real world challenges.
 “Operations and management” OR “Environmental impact & Green
practices” OR “New technologies and digitalisation”.
Each student should provide a broad understanding of the supply chain studied
by the group, touching the points presented in Component A, but with a deeper
focus on the chosen topic.
viii) Conclusions on how your learning could be used in the future.
ix) Recommendations – what future learning would be useful for you.

Note: these are not necessarily the titles of your sections, but a guide as to what could
be included. You should not use generic titles. It is more meaningful to the reader to
see descriptive titles for sections and paragraphs.

The report should be up to 2,500 words long in accordance, with faculty policy
penalties relating to word/page length applying as follows:

- No penalty for being under the word/ page count – reflected in the marks.
- Text over the 2,500-word limit will not be marked.
Tables, which include significant amounts of text, will be included within the word
limit.

The following will not be included in the word limit:

- Front/title pages/summary/abstract/acknowledgements
- Contents pages
- Reference lists
- Appendices (only attach those necessary for understanding of your report).
- Drawings, graphs, photographs
The report should be word processed using the faculty recommended font: Arial 11
point 1.5 spacing on A4 paper, with left hand margin of at least 3 cm to allow for
binding. It must be submitted by the published hand-in date.

ELECTRONIC SUBMISSION
Your Report must be submitted electronically, as a Word Document, via Moodle in
accordance with the College requirements for electronic submission. Word allows staff

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 to annotate your report and provide direct feedback on the report content and your
report writing style.

A general marking grid that applies to both the written submission and verbal pitch is provided
overleaf.
When preparing your presentation and your report, please refer to the marking criteria
below.

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 Marking Criteria
Presentations and Reports will be marked in accordance with the marking criteria, appended below.

Presentation
SCM plan element Distinction (70+) Merit (60-69) Pass (50-59) Fail (<50)

1. Explanation of the You have proposed a credible SC with You have proposed a credible SC. You have proposed a viable SC. You You provide only a superficial
novel elements. You demonstrate You demonstrate a very sound demonstrate some understanding of explanation of your proposed SC, with
supply chain network
comprehensive and authoritative understanding of how the SC will how the SC will operate and how you little or no explanation of how will
and components, understanding of your structure, operate, and what stakeholders will manage it a, but there are gaps in manage it.
stakeholders, and your reference are involved. your justification.
including competitors
market.

2. Reference market, You have carried out an in-depth You have a general You have some understanding of You have little or very superficial
analysis of your reference market and understanding of your reference your reference market, with some understanding of your reference market
competitors, customers
your competitors. You have identified market and competitors. You limitations in terms of critical analysis and competitors. No growth plan in
your customers and have clearly have made some considerations of your position against your place.
indicated where you are located towards potential growth in the competitors.
against your competitors. You have a next years.
growth plan in place for your
company.
3. Cost and times You demonstrate authoritative You demonstrate sound You demonstrate some You demonstrate little or no
understanding of the nature and understanding of the nature and understanding of the nature and understanding of the nature and
structure of the costs, times, and structure of the costs, times and structure of the costs, times and structure of the costs, times and quality
quality requirements associated with quality standards associated quality standards associated with standards associated with your SC. You
your SC. Your assessment is very well with your SC. Your assessment is your SC. You have made limited use have made almost no use of relevant
supported by relevant evidence and supported by relevant evidence of relevant evidence and analysis. evidence.
your own analyses. with some of your own analyses.
4. Transport and You have a clear and coherent You made good considerations General high-level knowledge and Your transport and warehousing
understanding of your transport and towards your transport and understanding of strategy is very limited, and it is not
warehousing
warehousing strategy. You made warehousing strategy, taking transport/warehousing related clear why you made decisions in terms
consistent assumptions and have a into account maximisation of SC issues, specific to your supply chain. of warehousing and transport/delivery
strong strategy in place. efficiency. across your SC.
5. Quality of Highly polished and professional Very good, with some room for Competent Poor / incoherent
improvement
communication

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 Report
SCM plan element Distinction (70+) Merit (60-69) Pass (50-59) Fail (<50)

1. Critical analysis of real You have successfully critically You have presented a very good You have proposed a sufficiently You have only superficially explored
analysed the responses of your level of understanding of what interesting set of questions to what the real-world challenges are, with
world challenges
interviewee and made critical real-world challenges are, and explore real-world challenges. You little or no explanation of how a SC
considerations towards real-world asked appropriate questions to demonstrate some understanding of manager would manage them.
(Part 1)
challenges. You demonstrated a explore the issues. You how a SC manager would manage
comprehensive and authoritative demonstrate a very sound them, but there are gaps in your
understanding of impact supply chain understanding of how real-world explanation.
operations and decision making. challenges impact SC operations.
2. Operations You demonstrate authoritative You demonstrate sound You demonstrate some You demonstrate little or no
understanding of the nature and understanding of the nature and understanding of the nature and understanding of the nature and
Management*
structure of the costs, times, and structure of the costs, times and structure of the costs, times and structure of the costs, times and quality
quality requirements associated with quality standards associated quality standards associated with standards associated with your SC. You
(Part 2)
your SC. Your assessment is very well with your SC. Your assessment is your SC. You have made limited use have made almost no use of relevant
supported by relevant evidence and supported by relevant evidence of relevant evidence and analysis. evidence.
your own analyses. with some of your own analyses.
3. Identification of You demonstrate expert You demonstrate very good You demonstrate some You demonstrate little or no
understanding of the environmental understanding of the understanding of the environmental understanding of the environmental
environmental impact
impact of your SC operations. You environmental impact of your SC impact of your SC and provide some impact of your SC.
& green practices* propose effective green practices and operations and implement good indications about green practices you
quantify their impact on your green practices. might implement.
(Part 2) operations (e.g. costs, times, quality).

4. New technologies and You provide an excellent You provide a very good You provide a reasonable statement You provide only a superficial
understanding of what kind of new explanation of how you use new of how new technologies supports explanation of how you can use new
digitalisation*
technologies support the efficiency of technologies to improve your SC you to improve your SC efficiency. technologies across your SC. There is
your SC operations and what kind of operations. Your explanation is You have used evidence, but to a little evidence to support your
(Part 2)
impact they have on your SC well supported by evidence. limited extent. discussion.
performance. Your explanation is
extremely well supported by
evidence.
5. Stakeholder You have an excellent understanding You provide a very good You provide a reasonable statement You provide only a superficial
of your stakeholders, and how to explanation of your stakeholder of how you manage your explanation of your stakeholder
Management*
manage them. You have clearly structure and how to manage stakeholders and what structure and the way you manage

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 (Part 2) identified what power and impact them. Your explanation is well influence/impact they have on your them. There is little evidence to support
they have on your supply chain. supported by evidence. supply chain, with limited your discussion.
considerations towards engagement
You provide some evidence, but to a
limited extent.
6. Quality of Highly polished and professional Very good, with some room for Competent Poor / incoherent
improvement
communication

*Each student will be evaluated on Criteria 1 and 5, plus one among 2, 3, or 4, depending on the “role” they have in their SCM team.

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