Jari Collin

Plan for supply chain agility at Nokia

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe how demand planning can increase agility in supply chains. The paper builds on a case study from mobile infrastructure industry with explicit focus on project business environment.Design/methodology/approach – The paper contains a short theoretical review on supply chain agility, different planning and forecasting concepts and explores the linkages between them. Empiric evidence is collected from Nokia Networks as a case study. Main lessons are primarily taken from integrated project management program that is to implement a truly customer‐focused delivery process in the case company.Findings – Suppliers should pay more attention on effectively utilizing customers project plans for aligning their supply chain. Supply chain agility does not just happen but requires continuous planning.Practical implications – Common project planning is the most natural way for customers to share future demand information between the supply chain players. Instead separate ...

Site inventory tracking in the project supply chain: problem description and solution proposal in a very large telecom project

Purpose – This paper aims to describe how performance in the project supply chain can be improved by implementing information technology solutions that track site installation and inventory.Design/methodology/approach – The case study was initiated after observing unexpected problems and subsequent performance improvement in a very large project delivery. Personnel involved in the project were interviewed and project documentation was analyzed to identify the reasons for initial poor performance and the changes that lead to the observed improvement.Findings – As the scale and complexity of a delivery project increases the role of accurate and robust tracking of installation work and inventory increases. Alignment between participants breaks down in the absence of reliable inventory tracking with potentially very adverse effects on project delivery operations. Introducing reliable inventory tracking can very quickly re‐align participants and improve overall performance in a telecom delivery project.Researc...

Demand‐supply chain representation: A tool for economic organizing of industrial services

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose demand‐supply chain representation as a tool to support economic organizing between original equipment manufacturers going downstream and customers considering how to better outsource maintenance and asset management.Design/methodology/approach – This paper is a presentation of a representation tool using a design theory template.Findings – The concept of demand visibility point and requirements penetration point can be used to describe different ways of economic organizing as interaction between demand and supply. The proposed representation scheme supports the identification of visibility‐based changes in economic organization, such as vendor‐managed inventory and reliability‐based maintenance services.Research limitations/implications – The paper is conceptual and requires further empirical work.Practical implications – The representation tool can be used both by practitioners engaged in outsourcing maintenance and practitioners involved in the developm...

Implementing inventory transparency to temporary storage locations: A solution design experiment in project business

Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to evaluate the feasibility of implementing a tracking based inventory management system in temporary storage locations of a project delivery chain. To describe the use of tracking based inventory information for improved logistics control in equipment delivery and installation.Design/methodology/approach – A solution design experiment was carried out in 16 temporary storage locations with one original equipment manufacturer and four installation partners.Findings – It is feasible to implement tracking based inventory management in temporary storage locations. The challenge is to ensure that installation partners adopt the system. The benefit is improved logistics control of equipment delivery and installation for the original equipment manufacturer.Research limitations/implications – Tracking information is more useful than conventional stock keeping in project delivery. By monitoring the dwell time of delivery items it is possible to identify and resolve problems in...

Architects' Perceptions on EA Use -- An Empirical Study

Enterprise Architecture (EA) is increasingly being utilized by organizations as an approach to manage the complexity of business processes, information systems and technical infrastructure. Although EA is generally regarded as an effective management tool, its full benefits can be realized only when it is incorporated into day-to-day operations of the organization. In the Finnish public sector, the use of EA has recently been mandated by the newly passed Act on Information Management Governance in Public Administration. The aim of the legislation is to achieve more efficient, integrated and cost-efficient public services. This article describes the results of a survey aimed to identify perceptions on actual EA work among Finnish public sector participants currently undertaking EA initiatives. The results highlight potential issues related to successful EA adoption.

Improving Strategic Alignment: A Case Study

This study aims at providing organizations with new insight on how IT governance practices impact strategic alignment. The research is conducted as an in-depth case study in a large, multinational manufacturing and service company. The case reveals that improving IT governance practices is not sufficient to achieve high alignment, when the understanding of strategic value of IT is lacking. Improved alignment would require that IT is perceived as a strategic function in the organization and the IT governance treated accordingly. Bringing business and IT socially and culturally closer to each other is also required, but improving alignment on the social and cultural dimensions is dependent on the existence of the strategic direction: achieving alignment is difficult without common objectives between business and IT people. In general, the study illustrates limited impact of IT governance practices on alignment without requisite strategic direction.