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Soft Systems Methodology in Action: a Case Study at a Purchasing Department

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Soft Systems Methodology in Action: a Case Study at a Purchasing Department Magisteruppsats i Informatik Master thesis in Informatics REPORT NO. 2008:034 ISSN: 1651-4769 Department of Applied Information Technology Soft Systems Methodology in action: A case study at a purchasing department Using SSM to suggest a new way of conducting financial reporting at a purchasing department in the automotive industry OLLE L. BJERKE IT Universtiy of Göteborg Chalmers University of Technology and Universtiy of Gothenburg Göteborg, Sweden 2008 1 Using Soft Systems Methodology at a purchasing department to conduct a study of financial reporting needs Olle L. Bjerke Department of Applied Information Technology IT University of Göteborg Göteborg University and Chalmers University of Technology SUMMARY The aim of this essay has been to try out Soft Systems Methodology on financial reporting at Volvo Cars Corporation (VCC). VCC saw a possible opportunity to improve their reporting processes, and SSM was chosen to deal with this possible problematic situation. Action Research became the natural way of conducting the study since it is almost a mandatory way of conducting SSM. A delimitation was made due to limited resources and only a small part of the purchasing department was involved, namely electrical purchasing. The result of the study is the artifacts from the different SSM steps that points upon how the participants would like the reporting system to be as well as many issues with the current reporting process. These outputs from the method were regarded as successful by both practitioner and participants. In essence the method was considered to be effective on a case such as this. This report is written in English Keywords: SSM, Soft Systems Methodology, VCC, Case, Financial, Report, Action Research, Volvo. 2 Acknowledgement First of all I would like to thank Volvo Cars Corporation for letting me conduct this study at their Purchasing department at the Torslanda production plant. Then I would like to thank my assigned tutors Sofia Wessman and Erik Edvardsson as well as my supervisor Martin Kruse. A special thanks to Sofia Wessman for patiently answering all my questions and helping out with everything from who I should contact to general knowledge of the organization and always going the extra mile to explain everything! Equally has Martin Kruse reviewed my work and taking time out of his busy schedule for giving feedback throughout the process as well as helping out in contacting the right employees and believing in me and my work and supporting the process with sorting out all the practical details. Not for a second have I regretted having Kjell Engberg as my supervising professor who has given me invaluable help with constructive feedback and helping me develop my academic skills. I deeply appreciate our meetings, even on short notice taking time to discuss thoroughly all issues and ideas and even taking your time to visit Volvo Cars. Without your feedback this essay would never have been what it currently is. And last but certainly not least all electrical purchasing who has taken great interest in helping out with this study and taking time to help out during interviews, emails and workshops on top of their normal tasks. Without your continued patronage and dedication during all workshops has been essential to this study! A special thank you goes out to Torbjörn Jakobsson, Bert Larsson, Richard Ashford, Susanne Pålsson and Hans Börjesson And also my father Lars-Eric Bjerke for contributing with his experience in academic English for spellchecking this essay! 3 Table of Contents 1. Introduction........................................................................................................................6 1.2 Question at issue...........................................................................................................6 1.3 The background to this thesis........................................................................................6 1.4 Using SSM at VCC.......................................................................................................7 1.5 How the VCC purchasing department works.................................................................8 1.6 Current financial reporting procedure............................................................................9 1.6.1 The common purpose behind all three reports ........................................................9 1.6.2 Business Plan.......................................................................................................11 1.6.3 Commodity Business Plan....................................................................................11 1.6.4 GAP Event Template ...........................................................................................11 1.6.5 PCR Report..........................................................................................................12 1.6.5 Summary of differences and similarities between reports used by buyers .............12 2.0 Method...........................................................................................................................13 2.1 Literature studies ........................................................................................................13 2.2 Interviews...................................................................................................................13 2.3 Workshops..................................................................................................................14 2.4 E-mail.........................................................................................................................14 2.5 Action Research..........................................................................................................14 3.0 Theory............................................................................................................................15 3.1 Putting SSM in a context.............................................................................................15 3.1.1 The origin of SSM – Systems Thinking................................................................15 3.1.2 Possible alternative methods of approaching the problem.....................................16 3.2 What is SSM all about?...............................................................................................22 3.2.1 Acting upon problematic situations ......................................................................22 3.2.2 Flexibilities importance to SSM ...........................................................................23 3.3 System thinking ..........................................................................................................23 3.4 The SSM process........................................................................................................25 3.5 Rich Pictures...............................................................................................................26 3.6 Analysis 1 – The intervention......................................................................................27 3.7 Analysis 2 – Social .....................................................................................................29 3.8 Analysis 3 - Political...................................................................................................30 3.9 Making activity models...............................................................................................30 3.10 Using models to structure discussion.........................................................................34 3.11 Defining Action to Improve ......................................................................................36 4.0 The VCC Case................................................................................................................38 4.1 Step one, define the problematic situation ...................................................................38 4.2 Rich Picture ................................................................................................................38 4.3 Analysis......................................................................................................................40 4.3.1 The Intervention...................................................................................................40 4.3.2 Social analysis......................................................................................................41 4.3.3 Political analysis ..................................................................................................41 4.4 Making activity models...............................................................................................41 4.4.1 Root Definition ....................................................................................................41 4.4.2 CATWOE............................................................................................................41 4.4.3 The Three E´s ......................................................................................................43 4.4.4 Group Meeting Root Definition............................................................................44 4.4.5 The Three E´s 2....................................................................................................51 4 4.4.6 Creating the Root Definition RD..........................................................................54 4.4.7 Creating a basis for the root definition..................................................................55 4.5 Conceptual
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