Att skapa en välfungerande arbetsprocess Processutveckling på Ericsson i Katrineholm
In process oriented organizations, it is important to have well-functioning work processes tosupport the work being performed. In order to accomplish this, the organization has to makecertain decisions regarding the design and usage of the processes. This master thesis is based ona case study of a work process that is being used for the industrialization of products at Ericssonin Katrineholm. The aim of the study is twofold. One aim is to improve the studied process byidentifying improvement opportunities and carrying out the required adjustments. The other,more general, aim is to examine what aspects or factors an organization needs to take intoconsideration to be able to develop a well-functioning process. The pursuit of this aim includestaking both findings from the case study and relevant literature into account.Primary data has mainly been collected through qualitative interviews at Ericsson. An analysis ofthese data resulted in nine identified improvement opportunities for the industrialization process.Eventually, the work with carrying out adjustments was concentrated to the checklists being usedas a facilitating tool for the management of the industrialization projects. The checklists weremodified in several ways. The most radical change was a new checklist structure, in which thegrouping of the checkpoints is based on the sub-processes of Ericsson?s generic industrializationprocess instead of idealized project functions. There are many advantages with the new structure.For example, the logical flow of the process becomes more visible and focus is shifted from whois going to perform the activity to a more holistic view of what should be done.On a general level, the study shows that it is reasonable to use processes as a means to transferknowledge between projects. This especially applies to project environments made up of severalsimilar projects whose content is fairly well-known beforehand. Furthermore, the study indicatesthat the following set of factors affect the supportive and quality-assuring function of a process:flexibility of the process, detail level of the process, minimized bureaucracy,functioningcontinuous improvement, priority on using the process, and the process as a coherent system. Bytaking these factors into consideration, an organization can increase its awareness of certaindecisions that have to be made when working with process development.