Learning from the BPS project

“For the purpose of learning, it does not matter whether a project has been successful or not. One can learn from successes and failures from mindful actions as well as mistakes” (Van Aken et al. 2009, p.119). In this part, I refer to some important issues that are not explicitly mentioned in the traditional literature on BPS projects, but are still valuable to be taken in consideration, when one takes the route of solving problems in business establishments. The first thing, which I learned in the execution of my project, was that it is possible the problems in companies are not previously defined or even recognized as such. The fact that the company representatives are displeased with some insufficiency in the performance of their organization does not automatically mean that they could define specific problems as potential topics for a problem-solving project. In reality, it is possible that the student hearing about insufficient conditions in the organization and reflecting on previous knowledge is the first to define the topic of the BPS project. Exploring the situation of DPD, I hear a lot about “delivery problems”, problems with “exceptions”, late delivered parcels and reducing merges. Therefore, I first have to find a topic for a BPS project and second - persuade the company representatives that an investment in such kind of project on exactly this topic will be worthwhile for their organization. The trickiest issue here was to define the scope of the topic in such a way that it is, on the one hand, interesting for the company to be tackled as an overall problem, but in the same time to be also resolvable within a reasonable amount of time and with the spending of acceptable amount of resources.

85 The problem with the low audit results of the depot in Bentheim was seen by the company management as a very interesting topic to be worked on and accepted by my university supervisors. The difference to normal projects was that the problem with the low audit results was not an issue that could be defined based on single insufficient performance or operational condition (returning on innovation, maintenance of knowledge etc.). Low audit results are numbers indicating that something is going wrong in the organization by representing the whole picture. Therefore, I have to analyze what were the most important problems leading to the low results. First, I have to find the connection between specific phenomena and the insufficient audit, before I could start searching for their potential causes. Later in the analysis, it was realized that the low audit results are caused by a poor performance of three different operational categories. Subsequently, I could further detect a number of tiny causes responsible for the low performance on each category. However, focusing on these causes and working on them, would surely not lead to improving the overall audit performance. For that reason, I assign the individual causes to common general issues according to common characteristics. Consulting with the theory on organizational design, I could define ‘formalization’ ‘specialization’ and ‘professionalism’ as major problems leading to the low performance in the abovementioned operational categories. Taken together, the method I used to resolve the problem is different from the cause and effect diagram proposed by Van Aken et al. (2009). The aggregation of causes to common problem categories was a complicated and extensive approach. However, this approach allowed me to discern single shortcomings and tackle broad operational issues with a direct influence on the audit results of the depot. Improving the performance of one business organization is something that requires very specific understanding of the work system involved, but also abstract knowledge of various scientific disciplines and methods. Executing my project, I have experienced how complicated for one is to make the link from the specific to the abstract and then again, implement the abstract for the purpose of the specific. It is true that the conveyor system in the depot in Bentheim is itself different from this in the depot in Muenster and because of this one cannot implement the effective processes from the one production area to the other. On the other hand, practices used previously in casinos, pin factories, auto production facilities etc. seemed very useful for the division of tasks into jobs, training of the employees and the developing of formal documentation for my project. Referring to my experience it could be said that independent from how sure the managers of the companies are in their peculiar problems, one

86 has always to look at previous experiences documented in the scientific literature. Although every company has its specific problems, it is always useful for one to use accumulated knowledge instead of trying to reinvent the wheel. Considering chapter two of the thesis, I would say that there is no gap between rigor and relevance. There are not many people spending sufficient amount of time for closing it.