IKEA Planning Year Cycle

Abstract: IKEA is currently in the progress of integrating Business Process Management (BPM) into the current functional organization. In order to investigate how to increase the accuracy of the capacity planning, IKEA saw a need of examining the processes connected to Plan & Secure Capacity, a sub process to the main process Supplying. The purpose of this master thesis is to by using Network Planning map existing timelines for activities within the process Plan & Secure Capacity as well as for processes connected to it. In cases where information regarding processes is inadequate an “as is” description of the flow is to be mapped. Furthermore the planning cycle within Plan & Secure is to be reviewed and recommendations of how to make it quicker, leaner and simpler shall be given. A descriptive and normative methodology approach was chosen in order to primarily explain and examine how the current situation is, and secondarily to suggest future recommendations. Information gathering was done in an inductive way combined with qualitative methods. Primary data was gathered mostly via interviews and in order to sustain a high level of reliability validation protocols were sent out. Secondary data was mostly used to form the theoretical framework and has been gathered from research reports and literature originating from well established universities or organizations. The theory in the master thesis focuses on Network planning in order to determine possible time savings and to illustrate connections and critical paths via timelines and precedence relations. In order to create and understand process maps in a proper way the theoretical framework also includes Process Management. The Capacity planning and the processes connected to it represents a complex context with a lot of factors influencing the outcome. The mapping of processes connected to Plan & Secure Capacity has shown that the outcome of a planning cycle has no further connection to the next planning cycle taking place. This enables some possible changes in the timelines and these can be further studied in Conclusions and Recommendations together with highlighted problems and suggested solutions.