Improving Business Performance
Week 8 Assignment
System Thinking for Good, Part 1
In the Assignments for this module, you will assume the role of a consultant who has been asked by the upper management team to evaluate an organizational performance problem within an organization. You will present your findings in the form of a written report with an executive summary presented as a PowerPoint presentation. The organization for this evaluation will be one of your choices, and it should be one with which you are familiar. This organization could be where you currently work or where you have worked in the past.
After selecting an organization with which you are personally familiar, you are to present your evaluation and recommendations in a detailed business report. Additionally, you will prepare an executive summary of your findings to be presented as a PowerPoint slide deck to the organization’s upper management team. Your report should contain three parts (Part 1 is due this week; Part 2 is due in Week 9; and Part 3 is due in Week 10) and must include specific examples from the organization, as well as relevant citations from the Learning Resources, the Walden Library, and/or other appropriate academic sources to support your evaluation.
To prepare for this Assignment:
· Download the
Module 3 Assignment Template (Word document)
Download Module 3 Assignment Template (Word document)
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Note: Be sure to keep a copy of your completed Assignment this week, as you will be adding to the same file for your Assignments for Week 9 and Week 10.
Submit Part 1 of your business report, to include the following:
Part 1: Business Improvements (4–5 pages)
· Analyze some of the basic details about the organization. At a minimum, the basic details should include: the industry and products/services the organization offers, the overall operational and financial health of the organization, and a qualitative or systems diagram summary of how the organization operates to fulfill its commitments to customers.
· Analyze what you believe to be the fundamental physical, policy, or market constraints that are preventing your organization from moving to the next level of performance. Be sure to clearly identify each primary constraint and provide a detailed argument and evidence for why you think each is a primary constraint to organizational performance. Be sure to support your response with appropriate concepts from performance management and/or systems thinking.
· For each of the fundamental physical, policy, or market constraints that you identified as preventing your organization from moving to the next level of performance, justify a specific recommendation for how to elevate, support, and potentially eliminate the constraint.
· Using the concepts of throughput accounting and Theory of Constraints accounting measurements for each of your recommendations, evaluate how the primary metrics of T, I, and OE would be affected and why the recommendations would make sense from a performance measurement perspective.
