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Consultancy Project
1,464 words
Enhancing Sustainable Supply Chain Practices through Digital Transformation: A Case Study of Unilever Plc
This consultancy project proposal examines how digital transformation can enhance sustainable supply chain practices at Unilever Plc. Unilever is presented as a multinational fast-moving consumer goods organisation operating across more than 190 markets, with a complex global supply chain and sustainability commitments linked to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The proposal focuses on the challenges associated with achieving supply chain transparency, managing fragmented sustainability data, and balancing sustainable sourcing and operational costs. The project investigates how emerging digital technologies, particularly blockchain, the Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), could support greater transparency, traceability, operational efficiency and sustainability within Unilever's supply chain. The organisational analysis identifies issues including the complexity of tracing raw materials across multi-tier supply chains, fragmented procurement and sustainability information systems, and the tension between sustainability investments and short-term operational costs. The proposal also considers infrastructure readiness, data security and employee upskilling as factors affecting digital transformation. The research aims to examine how digital transformation technologies could improve sustainable supply chain planning at Unilever while supporting long-term business and environmental goals. Three objectives are established: examining sustainability challenges affecting Unilever's global supply chain, assessing how blockchain, IoT and AI could improve transparency, traceability and efficiency, and proposing strategic recommendations for integrating digital innovation into Unilever's sustainability framework. The central research question examines how digital transformation can contribute to an ethical, transparent and sustainable supply chain while maintaining operational efficiency. A qualitative exploratory case-study research design is proposed. The main emphasis is on secondary data, including Unilever's annual reports, sustainability information, digital transformation publications, company news, industry articles and analyst reports. Where feasible, primary data may be collected through semi-structured expert interviews and a short qualitative questionnaire. The proposed analysis includes thematic analysis, document review and descriptive statistics using relevant secondary numerical data. Validity is supported through triangulation, while reliability is addressed through consistent coding and an audit trail. The proposal also addresses ethical considerations, including research integrity, transparency, confidentiality, informed consent, anonymity, GDPR requirements, plagiarism avoidance, Harvard referencing and potential corporate bias or greenwashing. Overall, the project explores the potential contribution of digital innovation to Unilever's sustainability objectives and the wider responsible digitalisation of the FMCG supply chain.
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Supply Chain Management / Strategic Sourcing
1,800 words
Strategic Sourcing and Supply Chain Resilience Under Global Uncertainty
This postgraduate supply-chain assessment examines how organisations operating in the UK are adapting their strategic sourcing and supply-chain practices in response to sustained global uncertainty. The assignment is situated within an environment shaped by major disruptions including the Covid-19 pandemic, geopolitical conflicts, trade tensions, tariff volatility and Brexit, all of which have challenged the reliability, cost efficiency and resilience of globally distributed supply networks. Students select either a British organisation or a multinational enterprise with significant UK operations and critically analyse its documented supply-chain strategy. Potential areas of investigation include insourcing and outsourcing, offshoring, reshoring and nearshoring, single versus multiple sourcing, supplier selection and monitoring, supplier and customer relationships, inventory management, digitalisation, sustainable sourcing and supply-chain risk management. The assessment requires more than description. Students must provide a critical and theoretically informed evaluation of the organisation's decisions, identifying both opportunities and risks associated with its strategic response. At least one relevant theoretical framework or analytical tool must be applied to assess the company's sourcing or supply-chain decisions. The analysis must also include at least one company practice or decision from 2025 and conclude with a detailed recommendation explaining actionable steps, implementation challenges, expected outcomes and alignment with organisational objectives. Research must draw on a minimum of 10 credible sources, including at least five academic journal articles and five non-academic sources such as news articles, industry reports or corporate publications. At least two of the non-academic sources must have been published during 2025–2026. Students may present the work as either a business report or academic essay, with consistent in-text citation and referencing. Norwich Business School normally requires the Harvard referencing system. Overview word count: approximately 340 words. Note: the document header states PG Coursework 2025–26, but one later line gives a submission deadline of 15 May 2025, which appears inconsistent with the stated academic year. I would therefore use 2025/26 for the library record and avoid publishing the deadline unless it is verified.
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Operations and Supply Chain Management
1,800 words
Strategic Sourcing and Supply Chain Resilience Under Global Uncertainty — A Firm-Level Critical Evaluation
This type of postgraduate coursework asks students to take a single real firm — a British company, or a multinational with substantial UK operations — and critically evaluate how its sourcing and supply chain strategy has adapted to a decade of sustained disruption: the pandemic, geopolitical conflict, tariff volatility, and departure from the European single market. The analytical scope is broad but the depth expectation is narrow. Students choose one or two themes rather than surveying all of them: insourcing versus outsourcing and location decisions; single versus multi-sourcing across supplier segments or regions; how supplier selection and monitoring criteria have shifted toward reliability and geographic proximity; alignment between sourcing decisions and wider corporate objectives; supplier and customer relationship management under cross-border friction; inventory tactics such as stockpiling and safety stock repositioning; digital adoption for visibility and compliance; sustainable sourcing under cost pressure; or risk management around currency, customs and compliance. The evidence base is deliberately mixed. Alongside academic literature, students are expected to draw on annual reports, shareholder briefings, company statements, practitioner journals and recent news coverage — with a minimum spread of credible sources across both categories, and some of the non-academic material drawn from the most recent year so the analysis reflects current firm behaviour rather than historical commentary. At least one theoretical framework from the module or the wider literature must be applied to the firm's decisions, and at least one recent documented practice must be examined with specific sourcing. Two requirements distinguish strong submissions. The first is criticality: the brief explicitly separates evaluation from description, and marks weight critical analysis most heavily. Reporting what a firm did is not the task; assessing whether it was the right response, and what opportunities and risks it created, is. The second is the recommendation — at least one specific, actionable proposal with steps, anticipated obstacles, expected outcomes, and a clear line back to the firm's own stated goals. A generic suggestion to "diversify suppliers" fails this test; a costed, sequenced proposal grounded in the firm's actual constraints does not. Word-count conventions are stricter than students often expect: in-text references, tables, illustrations and front matter typically count, while appendices and the reference list do not. Our support on assessments of this type is guidance-based. Typical areas of help include: narrowing a firm and theme so the analysis fits the word limit, explaining the difference between description and critical evaluation with worked examples, clarifying how a theoretical framework should structure an argument rather than sit decoratively in a paragraph, checking source mix and Harvard referencing consistency, and reviewing a completed draft against the published assessment weightings.
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