Investigating the Coordination Between Operations and Sales in an Industrial Environment - a Case Study at Tetra Pak

Sammanfattning: Misaligned strategies that are developed within different units in a company is unfortunately a common occurrence. Generally, operations strategy and marketing strategy are difficult to align; the operations unit and the sales unit often have troubles understanding each other. If adding a capacity planning perspective to this issue, it is obvious that the two units need a full understanding for each other to be able to work cooperatively with the capacity planning and make joint decisions that support the actual needs of the customer. As a result of strategic misalignment, the operations unit struggles to make a strategic decision regarding the balancing of capacity levels and costs. By conducting a case study at Tetra Pak Sweden, the complex issue of coordinating the operations unit and sales unit was investigated further. A theoretical framework, the ICOS-framework, was developed to visualize the areas of importance to understand the issue. A complex situation was then described at Tetra Pak in order to show how the issue can present itself in reality. In parallel, a capacity planning tool was designed in Excel to support capacity planning decisions and visualise how the decisions taken in the operations unit affect customer satisfaction in the end. In conclusion, a joint measurement in terms of a service level (based on actual expectations from customers) could be the first step towards finding a solution to the misalignment between operations and sales.