Sustainable Operations Management (H/618/1235) Assignment Brief 2026

Sustainable Operations Management Assignment Brief

Assignment Aim

The aim of this unit is to develop learners’ understanding, knowledge and skills of sustainable operations management, including key elements of sustainability and their importance to businesses, the business drivers and barriers affecting the move towards sustainability, the different practices across the supply chain that can be worked upon to improve sustainability as well as the performance measures and the business impact of sustainability. A variety of different sectors are explored.

Learning Outcome and Assessment Criteria

Newspaper Report

Tesco: working with suppliers to cut food waste by Katharine Earley

Tesco has become the UK’s first retailer to disclose the volume of food waste it produces, and is working with its suppliers to reduce this.

Around 1.3bn tonnes of food is wasted globally each year, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), putting pressure on the environment and costing producers £460m annually.

Working with sustainability consultancy Anthesis, Tesco developed a smart way of measuring where food waste occurred – from “farm to fork” – for 25 of its top-selling products. The company collected data from its producers and suppliers on why and how much food was wasted, and combined this with waste data from its own operations and Wrap statistics on domestic food waste.

By building a food waste footprint for each product, Tesco identified problem hotspots and created action plans to cut waste, from ending multi-buy offers on large bags of salad to ordering bakery products more accurately. It found that, for example, 17% of the grapes produced for its supermarkets are wasted by the consumer, and is working with suppliers to obtain fresher produce and improve the storage advice on packaging.

Tesco’s move to share its food waste data achieved widespread media coverage and was welcomed by leading food and environmental campaigners, including Wrap, Fareshare, Feeding the 5000 and Waste Watch.

The “Farm to Fork” metric is a first for the retail industry and has set a benchmark for businesses keen to act on food waste. Major UK retailers, including all the country’s biggest supermarket chains, have since agreed to work with the British Retail Consortium to share their data from 2015.

Tesco’s focus on reducing food waste forms part of its wider commitment to addressing the economic, health and environmental issues that are most important to the longevity of its business, and improving the transparency of its supply chain.

URL: https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/sustainability-case-studies-tesco-food-waste

Task 1 Essay

Instructions

As a part the assessment of this module, your tutor has asked you to write an essay on ‘Sustainable operations management’. You will be using the newspaper article as an inspiration and conduct further research. You can write your essay on Tesco or a similar organisation of your choice who are actively pursuing sustainability in their operations management.

Your essay should cover the following:

1. Explain the relevance of sustainability to businesses.
2. Critically assess key dimensions of sustainability incl. environmental, social and economic as well as practices within each.
3. Assess the relevance of different drivers of sustainability practices.
4. Appreciate the barriers or challenges to businesses with regards to sustainability.
5. Explain the different performance measures used to measure sustainability as well as how sustainability is reported.
6. Evaluate the existing position of a business with regards to different sustainability practices.
7. Highlight the appropriateness of different sustainability practices in your chosen business.
8. Evaluate the sustainability and business-related implications of implementing (sustainability) practices in your chosen business.

(LO1, AC1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5 and LO2, AC2.1, 2.2, 2.3)

Delivery and Submission:

• 1x Word file (circa 4500 words excluding TOC, diagrams, references and appendices)

Answer

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