OPERATIONS ANALYSIS - 2024/5

Module Overview

An important part of the manager’s job is to be able to identify and respond to problems that occur in hospitality operations and to take corrective action to return the operation to an appropriate position. This module builds on the student’s understanding of key concepts and allows them to apply that understanding to a realistic and constantly changing scenario.

Module provider

Surrey Hospitality & Tourism Management

Module Leader

KNOX Dan (SII DUFE)

Number of Credits: 15

ECTS Credits: 7.5

Framework: FHEQ Level 5

Module cap (Maximum number of students): N/A

Module Availability

Semester 2

Prerequisites / Co-requisites

None

Module content

Indicative content includes:

• Operations strategy and operations synergy


• Business and operational planning


• Control and performance measurement


• Performance analysis and evaluation

Assessment pattern

Alternative Assessment

Where a student cannot attend the group report this will be replaced with the individual assignment detailed below, in the Assessment Strategy, for August resits.

Assessment Strategy

The assessment strategy is designed to draw on the student’s experiences through the simulation exercise to build up a picture of the rationale and principles used to manage the business and explain the results achieved. In addition, students are asked to comment critically on the performance of their business as a whole and identify where alternative actions could have been taken. The first individual assignment requires the student to explore the theoretical frameworks underlying operations analysis and propose two applied operational control measures.  

Thus, the summative assessment for this module consists of: 

• Group report


• Individual Assignment

 In the Individual assignment, you are acting as an external consultant and have been asked to advise the operation’s management team on the key measures of operational performance that they should use to help control their business. 
 
The group assignment is to submit a summary of your management of the (simulated) hotel based on its performance and your competitors, identifying and explaining the key factors that you feel have affected the performance of your operation and ways in which performance could have been improved. 


 Analysis of Results 
 
You will be provided with a set of results for a single hotel business covering a given period of operation. From your analysis of these data, submit a report summarising these results providing an explanation of your understanding of the key operational rationale for the business, identifying and explaining the key factors that you feel have affected the performance of the operation and where you feel the management team were successful and unsuccessful.  
 
Formative assessment and Feedback: 

During the first lecture, the assignments and the feedback process is explained; 
 
Feedback is also provided during and after guided activities; As the activities are built around topic-specific exercises in a group setting, students do not only benefit from lecturer feedback but also receive peer evaluations in their teams; 

A pre-assignment feedback session is an integral part of this module. During this session, students present the annual results of their simulated hotel - a task which reflects the requirements of the assignment and receive feedback on their presentation; 
 
Once marking is completed, students are provided with feedback, which contains detailed and generic feedback as well as a breakdown of marks. This enables students to assess their own performance compared to their peers. 

Module aims

• The aim of this module is to provide students with the opportunity to apply the skills and knowledge gained in previous modules to the analysis of a simulated business operation, to take decisions about the future of that operation and evaluate their results.

Learning outcomes

Methods of Teaching / Learning

The learning and teaching strategy is designed to: allow students to experience the pressure of managing a business operation using a business simulation exercise and to link these experiences through a series of inputs and exercises to a series of underlying theories, concepts and models. 
 
The teaching and learning methods include the use of the HotelSim business simulation which is a competitive management exercise approximating a real world environment in which several free-standing organisations are competing for business in a closed, but elastic, economic system. Each exercise runs optimally with eight competing teams and is fully interactive, so that no two years can experience exactly the same results, although the underlying economic model ensures that the key drivers can be identified. 
 
In addition to the simulation exercise there will be a series of lectures and seminars to expand on some of the key underlying principles and the issues discovered through the discussion of the simulation exercise. 

 

Indicated Lecture Hours (which may also include seminars, tutorials, workshops and other contact time) are approximate and may include in-class tests where one or more of these are an assessment on the module. In-class tests are scheduled/organised separately to taught content and will be published on to student personal timetables, where they apply to taken modules, as soon as they are finalised by central administration. This will usually be after the initial publication of the teaching timetable for the relevant semester.

Reading list

https://readinglists.surrey.ac.uk
Upon accessing the reading list, please search for the module using the module code: MAN2113

Other information

This module adopts the University curriculum framework, which aims to develop learners with strong capabilities in Digital Capabilities, Employability, Global and Cultural Capabilities, Sustainability, and Resourcefulness and Resilience. This module contributes to the development of the following capabilities: 

Digital Capabilities: This module focuses on developing students’ capabilities in analysing operational data and capturing business insights for and from managerial decision making. Students will develop their skills in using descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analytics and data visualisation. They will use software to complete a management information dashboard. Students will use the virtual learning environment (VLE), SurreyLearn, Hotelsim, a hotel simulation product and Microsoft software to facilitate learning. These include accessing teaching and learning materials and engaging with their instructors and peers. Module assessments require students to work collaboratively with peers to analyse datasets and create a periodic dashboard to present insights from the datasets. 

Employability: The assessments in this module require students to extract business insights from datasets and to create a dashboard, to present the managerial implications of these insights. These business analytics and data-driven decision-making skills will prepare students to be successful managers in the digital age.

Global and Cultural Capabilities: Students will learn how to interpret results of operations analytics and their implications to service business in a global context by extracting, comparing, and contrasting datasets. 

Sustainability: Students will learn how to reflect on how to interpret business intelligence to support sustainability in the services industry. 

Resourcefulness and Resilience: Students will be required to work collaboratively with peers to manage simulated hotels and identify relationships, extract patterns and critical insights from periodic datasets to help with this. Finding solutions through unstructured problems is the key learning aspect of this module that will develop students’ resourcefulness and resilience. 

Please note that the information detailed within this record is accurate at the time of publishing and may be subject to change. This record contains information for the most up to date version of the programme / module for the 2024/5 academic year.