Diagnosis of a warehouse structure from the socio-technical systems design perspective

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Issue Date
2021-09-24
Language
en
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Abstract
The problem which indicated the essence of this research was the question of the management of a logistics service provider why their organization was unable to realize the given lead times, deal with disturbances and increase of costs of coordination. The goal of the research was to diagnosis the structure of the organization structure of the logistics service provider with regard to the socio-technical systems design parameters and providing recommendations how to reduce the gap between theoretical desired norm values and the observed values in practice. The research hypothesized that socio-technical systems design described by Achterbergh and Vriens (2019) could explain the lack of ability of the organization structure of the research object to deal with disturbances and lead time realization. Therefore, the main question of this research was: “How could the ability to deal with disturbances and unreliable lead times in the primary process of JCL be explained by the structure of the organization?”. In order to answer the main question a qualitative single case study was performed by means of literature study, semi-structured interviews, non-structured participating observations and a gap analysis to provide recommendations. The research resulted in the diagnosis that the organization structure of the logistics service provider scored high parameter values on five of the seven design parameter values. Therefore, the organization structure is considered to be a high value parameter structure which causes the problems with dealing with disturbances, lead times and order realization. This research is relevant for the management of the logistics service provider and for logistics professionals with similar problems in their organization.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen