Managing Change in the Warehouse. a structured change management methodology when implementing a warehouse management system

Abstract: As a consequence of the information society, smart and specialized IT based system, such as Warehouse Management Systems, have been developed to harness the increasing flow of information. While they are designed to increase the efficiency in the warehouse, the implementation of them requires the warehouse implementing it to adjust to the new environment it creates. This adaption have proven hard for the people working there, resulting in that the desired efficiency improvements often have taken longer than expected to achieve. A possible solution to this dilemma might be an increased focus on change management before, during and after the implementation. While there is literature, which has examined the general challenges associated with implementing IT systems such as e.g. ERP, few articles cover the specific challenges when implementing a WMS. Meanwhile, there are many methods and models, which claim to work as guidelines for working with change management, but few (if any) have been tailored to situation of a WMS implementation. The purpose for this master thesis is to develop a change management methodology for efficient, high quality, WMS implementations. Through interviews with project managers at a company who is developing and implementing a WMS, and with people who is working at different levels within the warehouse, from three companies who have recently implemented a new WMS, the main challenges with a WMS implementation have been identified. Thereafter, an evaluation of some selected change management model was performed where one was selected and modified to fit the context of a WMS implementation. The evaluation of change management models led to that the ADKAR model, developed by Hiatt (2006), was ultimately selected. The challenges of WMS implementation proved to be quite similar to a general IT implementation and most challenges can be handled through using the ADKAR methodology in its present form. But through appointing roles and responsibility to different people involved in the change process and tie them to specific activities, the authors believe that the developed methodology could be utilized to decrease the time spent from the implementation to that the desired efficiency levels are reached.