【正文】 y control. Second, a framework is presented to facilitate the application of the anizational perspective to practical inventory control problems. The third section of this article describes the research methodology of a performed case study in which the anizational perspective has been applied. The case study regards the spare parts inventory of a missionary aviation anization in Africa. Fourth, the results following 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。 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 of the anizational context that is important with respect to inventory control is the behavior of the parties involved. Since the Hawthorne experiments in the thirties it is widely recognized that social aspects influence the functioning of anizations (Dessler,1986。Silver et al., 1998). Depending on their involvement in determining aspects of inventory control,there will be little or much coherence. Thus, it is desirable to pay attention to the interaction between the several dimensions of inventory control rather than to traditional aspects or 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 munication processes separately. The next section of this article presents a framework that can be used to apply the anizational perspective to practical inventory control problems. 3. An integrated framework The employment of the anizational perspective on inventory control in practice can be facilitated by means of the framework presented in Fig. 2. The framework displays a way of approaching practical inventory control is based on a basic control loop to represent the underlying problemsolving process. In general,the starting point for a problemsolving process is an inventory system that performs below preset standards. In many cases, these preset standards are defined in terms of costs. Some examples of costs associated with the ‘ performance’ of inventory systems are storing costs, stockout costs,ordering costs and costs due to obsolescence. The performance of an inventory system refers, however,not only to welldefined cost , the main purpose of inventory management is to facilitate the smoothing between supply and demand. So any symptom indicating a lack of harmony between supply and demand may refer to a poor performance of the inventory system. Examples of some of these symptoms are instabilities in the (production) planning process,the existence of numerous rush orders and inefficient operation of production facilities. In many cases a deviating performance of the inventory system will activate a diagnosis of the inventory situation in which several aspects regarding inventory control are investigated (. 2). The oute of this diagnosis then serves as input for the construction of a redesign of the inventory system. Within this framework, there are a few guidelines for the diagnosis and redesign phase following from the application of the anizational perspective on inventory control. To begin with, applying the anizational perspective on inventory control in a problemsolving 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 process partly determines the structuring of the diagnosis phase of the process. The objective of this phase is to achieve a clear insight in the inventory situation under consideration and a thorough understanding of the cause(s) of the inventory control problem. To that end,