Standard and geographical dispersion : A study at the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration

Sammanfattning: This is the project report for the master thesis project in Industrial design engineering at Luleå University of Technology. The project spanned from January to June 2018. The project took place at the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration (FMV) in the sub-division FSV MarkV. FMV makes sure that Sweden’s defence and military have the proper and functioning equipment, whereas MarkV is responsible for providing services directed towards equipment operated on land.  MarkV wanted to implement standard as part of their planned introduction of MarkV Production System (MPS) in 2019. MPS faced the challenge of implementation at several geographically dispersed workshops. This project was therefore carried out to investigate if and how centralized standards could be implemented within their geographically dispersed organization. The project has included visits to the workshops in Boden and Luleå as well as participation at a meeting with the project group developing MPS. However, the project has mainly been conducted from a theoretical standpoint, where literature about this subject has been explored. From the theoretical framework, a requirement specification was compiled. This specification was used to point out the key components to a successful implementation. The result from this project was a model developed to describe how each and every of the key component worked, as well as how MarkV could go about affecting it. The key components in this model was standard, supporting structure, managers and leaders, employees and participation, organizational culture and dealing with resistance. A section in this model was later dedicated to addressing what must be thought of before full roll-out. It was concluded that MarkV can implement centralized standards. However, MarkV must understand that the demands put on the organization will vary between standard and standard work. Standards were also considered less likely to meet contradiction upon implementation compared to standard work. The obstacles to implementation was identified as human resistance and non-human resistance. However, it was also concluded that non-human actors, such as the standard itself and the platform for MPS could possibly facilitate change if properly designed. Identifying the root cause of resistance could contribute to the change process in terms of acting as constructive critique. Using the proposed rule-of-thumb could help MarkV cope with resistance without spending too much energy on convincing employees. For MarkV to maintain and improve standard, it was concluded that they must perform follow-up and constructively use deviations. MarkV has been recommended to use the developed model in their further development of MPS. Practical tips on how to affect individual components has been presented in the model itself as well as in the final recommendation.