What are the critical factors to consider in the design of a work system?

Paper instructions

Week 5

KandyLand provides sweet treats for all seasons, but they really gear up in the summer so that their products are ready to go for the winter holidays. However, KandyLand has been experiencing problems in the shipping department. Order fulfillment errors are high. During your assessment of their process, you discovered that orders place “on-line” via the web were filled correctly 98% of the time and those that were entered by call-center customer service representatives were filled incorrectly 98% of the time. It was determined that the call-center’s order entry tool was out of date and did not match that used by the shipping department. In addition, the data showed that over half of the customers ordering by phone had internet technology but were “not comfortable” ordering electronically, so they called their orders in. The “idea” is to move all orders to online order entry for all clients.

The Design:

Train the sales reps
Work with Marketing and Communications to create web and surface mail communications indicating that phone orders and surface mail orders will no longer be taken.
Arrange for sales representatives to call customers and walk them through an online order or to visit them in person and walk through the online order
Give sales reps an online form for reporting problems experienced by specific customers and other feedback.
At weekly QA (quality assurance) meetings, summarize sales reps feedback and actions taken to solve problems
Move 20% of customer service call-center reps into production roles or shipping roles
Three-months after transition, determine whether the call-center staffing ratio is correct, whether lay-offs are needed, and determine whether there are other call-center issues that need to be addressed.

Question B

What are the critical factors to consider in the design of a work system? What role does technology play in the design of work systems? Use data from credible outside resources to backup your response.