SKF - a Case Study, Roles& Responsibilities in it Issues

Abstract

This master thesis concerns the roles and responsibilities of IT issues in Supply Chain, which is SKFâ s biggest business process. Our investigation focuses on the three different roles, IT orderer, IT supplier and Supply Chain management and their responsibilities. This thesis consists of an evaluation of how these roles experience the current situation and how the desired situation looks like. We have studied the similarities and the differences between these two situations. Since there are two different views of the desired situation, of how working situation could be improved, we have compared the desired situation from the top-management point of view with the one that the employees have communicated to us. With this material as a base, we have compared the current situation with Hugosons model to see if, by using this model, it is possible for SKF to reach a desired situation. To investigate this we have studied literature and made interviews. We have come to the conclusions that the process organisation is not rooted in SKF when looking at the Supply Chain process. If SKF decides to implement the process organisation absolutely, there is a need of incitement for the Business divisions for carry out the work. There is also a great need of information about the work procedures to everyone that comes in contact with this organisation, since the process organisation is seen as a `product of the headquarterä in the way that only the highest members within the Group knows about it. The most important discovery we have made is the lack of goals for the process work. About the result of the comparison between the desired situation at SKF and Hugosons model we have seen many similarities but also two important differences which are of financial and authorisation matter. Roles and the collaboration between them are hard to define when an organisational change has not been implemented fully. If not all roles in a new organisation is assigned as supposed to, the consequence will be that the work within the organisation will stumble. Neither the new nor the old working procedures will function. This in turn leads to that the business will be negatively affected. Setting explicit goals and resource allocation are critical success factors when implementing a change strategy. If the strategy is the road to the goal, and no goal is set, the strategy will not ever be fulfilled and it will therefor not be possible to evaluate it as successful or as a failure. If resources are not allocated, no one will carry out and most certainly not pay for the strategy implementation. If the strategy has not been rooted at all organisational levels, it will be hard to carry out. It is the top managements job to set a shared vision and communicate it to each and all. Only then it is possible to have it rooted and carried out.