Objectives and target audiences

Marc checks his PowerPoint presentation one last time. He is a bit nervous, and feels some stage fright. At the same time, he is also quite elated. This afternoon he will get a full hour at the weekly factory management meeting to present and defend his design for a new mid-term production planning system, in which sales plans, made by the marketing department at headquarters, are translated into a production plan for the factory in city K.

It was several months ago that Marc, a graduate MBA student, had started his internship at the factory in city K of a large company dealing in industrial measuring equipment. During the intake the assignment had looked quite straightforward, but during the orientation stage in the first weeks it proved to be quite a complex one, partly because of political tensions between headquarters and the factory and partly because the factory's knowledge of the capacity of its various production facilities proved to be too limited. After the orientation phase, therefore, the assignment was broadened somewhat. It was not always easy; some people supported his assignment, giving him much time and many ideas, but others were somewhat sceptical, and were reluctant to interrupt their busy schedules to talk with him (especially at headquarters). However, with the strong support of the factory manager, his principal for the assignment, his company supervisor and his academic supervisor, and, furthermore, with the methodological support of the book Problem Solving in Organizations, he had been able to overcome all the obstacles. He had carried out a systematic review of the literature on the various aspects of his assignment and had used it as a major input into the design of his planning system; his design was surely an example of the ‘state of the art'.