【文章內(nèi)容簡(jiǎn)介】 llowing from the case study are presented. It can be concluded that taking the anizational context of inventories into account leads to a better understanding of the problem and to a more appropriate redesign of the inventory situation. The final section of this article summarizes the conclusions. 2. An anizational perspective on inventory control 西華大學(xué)交通與汽車工程學(xué)院 本科生畢業(yè)設(shè)計(jì)英文翻譯 Within the area of operations management and operations research many contributions regarding inventory control can be found. Traditionally they focus on three topics that are widely recognized to play an important part in inventory control: order quantities, order intervals and inventory control systems. See, for example, Plossl (1985) and Silveret al. (1998). The first topic regards order quantities or how much to order. In order to determine economic order quantities, several costs associated with inventories play a part, such as ordering costs and inventory carrying costs. The second topic regards the order interval or when to order. In this respect demand and leadtime processes are important. Finally, the third topic regards the inventory control system. Common subjects concerning systems for controlling inventories are ABC classifications and information systems. These three aspects represent the traditional characteristics of an inventory situation. In addition, they are considered to be starting points for improving inventory control. Over the past two decades, as the field of operations management has developed and matured, several new concepts have been added to the list of relevant inventory control topics. These more managementoriented topics include MRP, justintime (JIT) and ERP (Hayes,1998。 Leschke, 1998). Although these recent contributions have a more qualitative nature, they show the same onesided scope on inventory control as the previous contributions. In fact,most contributions pay little or no attention to the fact that the majority of inventories are situated in an anizational context. From a practical point of view it seems that the anizational setting of inventories should not be disregarded. Being situated within an anizational context several other factors play a part in inventory control. In general these factors lie outside the field of operations management and operations research but should nevertheless be taken into 西華大學(xué)交通與汽車工程學(xué)院 本科生畢業(yè)設(shè)計(jì)英文翻譯 consideration. Most factors regard the anizational incorporation of inventories and the associated information flows. A significant example concerning inventory management is the allocation of responsibilities and authorities. Inventory control problems can easily arise when for instance nobody in the anization is responsible for the inventory or the responsible person has insufficient authorities to carry out the , high inventory values indicating a lack of control may just be the result of inaccurate inventory records or of a reporting system that does not function well. Thus, the anizational context of inventories also contains several aspects that can affect inventory control. In order to identify significant aspects in the anizational context of inventories four dimensions can be distinguished. They are the allocation of tasks, decisionmaking processes, munication processes and behavior of the parties involved,as displayed in Fig. 1. First, the allocation of tasks is an important dimension in the anizational context of inventories. According to Lovejoy (1998) this dimension should be part of the foundations of an integrated view on operations management issues. Relevant characteristics in this respect are the number of people that are responsible for inventory management, their functional positions and their hierarchical positions in the anization. Another relevant characteristic is the fit between allocated responsibilities and authorities. Each one of these characteristics might influence the effectiveness of inventory control. Second, anizational theory shows that decisionmaking processes form a significant anizational dimension (. Daft, 1998). Like in other anizational areas, many decisions are made in inventory management, varying from annual strategic decisions to operational decisions concerning daytoday activities. The resulting inventory 西華大學(xué)交通與汽車工程學(xué)院 本科生畢業(yè)設(shè)計(jì)英文翻譯 control is influenced by how these decisions are made. Furthermore, the effectiveness of inventory control depends on the ways in which inventory decisions relate to each other and to other decisions in the anization. It is evident that, for instance, contradicting decisions or decisions that are based on wrong information can influence the effectiveness of inventory control. Third, munication processes represent another dimension in the anizational context of inventories. As stressed by anizational behaviorists,munication is a key process underlying all aspects of anizational operations ( and Baron, 1993。 Robbins, 1993). In this respect it is important to consider the influence of munication processes on inventory example, the forwarding of inventory information,the quality of that information and the provision of feedback can have a large impact on the effectiveness of inventory control. The fourth and final dimension o