Efficiency in the manufacturing industry is not a new phenomenon; Toyota andMotorola were to companies that early found a way to eliminate waste by inventing theefficiency models Lean and Six Sigma. For Sweden’s economy, the manufacturingindustry plays an important role in which the forestry industry accounts for around70,000 employees. The forestry industry is very capital intensive as a result of being amanufacturing industry with expensive machines and property, thereby it is important tohave an efficient production. To maximize the output from the machines it is a non-stopbusiness and sales needs to meet the production capacity. The efficiency focus inproduction based on such change programs that Toyota and Motorola created have in some cases been implemented in service organizations. It is until today not researched ifmanufacturing companies have been able to apply these change programs throughouttheir entire organization to create higher efficiency. This study will focus on if changeprograms have, or can be implemented in a customer service organization in a Swedishglobal manufacturing company within the forestry industry.To understand what has been done previously, a thorough investigation has beenconducted on previous research regarding change programs and how they have beenapplied in service organizations, this resulted in three highlighted change programs;Lean, TQM and Six Sigma. The literature review also includes sales, since higherorganizational efficiency can be reached if customer service performs sales activities.This has proven to lead to higher revenue for the company and increased the customers’satisfaction. The empirical findings originate from a qualitative study where I haveinterviewed employees in customer service and managers within sales and customerservice at my partner company, which is a Swedish global manufacturing companywithin the forestry industry. The interviews have given an in-depth knowledge on thecontext how they are working with efficiency, quality and sales within their customerservice units.The result show that it is important to have the fundamental platform settled before anyimplementations of sales can be done in customer service as time is a big hinder to beable to perform more tasks. Both previous research and the empirical findings highlightthe importance to understand your customers’ expectations and needs. My partnercompany in this study have implemented a good way to receive feedback and work withthis by conducting a customer satisfaction survey. The fundamental platform ispresented in a customer service management model in the practical contribution, chapter8.2.2. When the implementation of sales is to take place, top-management commitmentis needed to make the implementation successful and encourage the employees to fulfilthe changes to reach the desired result.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-137487 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Frisk, Viktor |
| Publisher | Umeå universitet, Företagsekonomi |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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