Sales Department – Plastic Bags and Gift Boxes

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Inefficient Paper Use

The big issue here is the large amounts of paper work that is being done at Ekmans in several parts of the process for different reasons. As mentioned in the description of the processes at the plastic bags and gift boxes as in the carton department the information from the business system Movex is printed out by the indoor sales representative before handed over to the Preparation department. The reason for printing is that information in the order has to be authorized by the accountable field sales representative. Since Ekmans does not have any digital system for this a printed copy has to be made and passed on to the field sales representatives. This process takes time for the indoor sales representatives who have a lot of other tasks to take care of. Simultaneously the timing with the field sales representatives can be less fortunate since they might not be at the office at that time to sign the document which will be delayed further. The problem is present through the whole process but out of old habits there are only the newest employees that see this as out dated.
Many of the more long lived people in the organization have been working in this same way for a very long time and are comfortable with the routine. Nevertheless, effort, time and resources are put into this type of inefficient system.
The preparation order printed by the indoor sales representatives is sent to the preparation department for further processing. At all stops on the way, information and remarks are put down onto the paper which in the end is handed over the preparation assistant to be put back into Movex. The direct effect of this is that at the time that one part of the preparation is done, the responsible needs to hand the actual paper over the next in line after putting down his or her information. Papers are easily lost or damaged and different people have various ways of working through their pile.

Incomplete Information

One huge time-waster is that indoor sales representatives and people at the Preparation department had to go back to the person before them in the process and demand more information.
This is a problem constantly occurring because complete information is never given from the start. Most of the time the process is just one step; the guy at Preparation or the indoor sales representative goes to the responsible field sales representative and asks for the missing information. But sometimes the preparation guy goes to the indoor sales representative that turns to the field salesperson. This is a big issue because it slows everything done and the later in the process the incomplete information is noticed, the more time is wasted. It is also a concern for the indoor sales representatives because they are having a hard time leaving an order and go on to the next project. The preparation-orde from a project they should have been done with keeps coming back to them over and over again and they get too much on their minds.
The problem occurs because the field sales representatives does not follow any protocol on which information they need to pass along but instead give what they believe is enough or in some cases even just what they bother to gather. The problem has existed for many years and also been highlighted before. There have been attempts to create routines or protocols regarding this situation to get rid of the problem but these have been ignored by the field salespeople. For the Preparation department the issue is extra severe at the carton side. The carton side suffered more from this than the other Sales department. The main reason behind this was once again “old habits”. The field sales representatives are being allowed to do things their way and the other employees accept it. This lack of information is something that most likely annoys customers who needs to be contacted several times and  the Preparation department needs to gather more information about the different projects, information they should not be needed to gather at all.
The customers are sometimes the cause of incomplete information and when this occurs the Preparation department turns either to the field sales representative responsible for the customer or the customer directly for more information. This is an issue that occurs once again because there is no instruction on which information the customer needs to provide at certain times. There is here a lack of protocol about who the people at the Preparation department should turn to and this sometimes caused them to overstep their boundaries and start doing tasks which the field sales representative is responsible for. Ekmans is suffering from a very territory-mindedness from the people at the different departments and behaviour like aforementioned is therefore of course not very appreciated.

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1 Introduction 
1.1 Background
1.2 Problem Discussion
1.3 Purpose
2 Research Design and Method 
2.1 Theory of Science.
2.2 Research Approach
2.3 Choice of Method
2.4 Gathering of Data
3 Frame of Reference.
3.1 Organizational Structure
3.2 Culture.
3.3 Change
3.3.1 Organizational Change.
3.3.2 Cultural Change
3.3.3 The Forces Behind Change
3.3.3.1 External Forces.
3.3.3.2 Internal Forces.
3.3.4 Why Change Fails
3.3.5 Resistance to Change
3.3.5.1 A Cognitive Approach .
3.4 Improvement Tools..
4 Empirical Findings
4.1 The Order Process
4.2 Sales Department – Plastic Bags and Gift Boxes
4.3 Sales Department – Carton
4.4 Preparation Department/Customer Support1
5 Analysis 
5.1 Restructuring
5.2 Problem Identification
5.3 Solutions.
5.4 Structure, Culture and Change.
6 Conclusion 
7 Discussion.
7.1 Further Research
References

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Improving the Order Receiving Process Case Study: Ekmans AB

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