Question

5) Review the selection process from a Reynolds perspective. What ideas used in the selection process did you learn from and would retain? What would you do differently? According to Rogers

Answer 1

team faced a lot of problems are various levels and stages of theselection process. At the outset, the two sides had completely di±erentbusiness requirements. The Swedish side was looking at this project from animmediate, low cost, no-frills while the American side was looking at itfrom a long-term strategic objective. Geographic distance between the twocenters, Atlanta and Marsta, and cultural differences added to the lack ofteam cohesiveness, which is very important in accomplishing a task at hand.Besides, there was a lot of transition going on within the company in spring1995. This created coordination problems leading to some delay and the lackof resource/expertise availability. To overcome these constraints Uttingdecided to get outside help and invited Bahar to bid on the softwareselection process. He also freed up Romanow’s time by transitioning his day-to-day tasks to an interim supervisor. During the RPF process in Woodstock,members from the Swedish team could not be present. This was overcomeby sending the preliminary list of requirements to Marsta for review. Anotherissue was the di±erence in the capital expenditure approval process, whichwas far more formalized in the US. Reasons for following the US process wascommunicated to all but did not put concerns on the Swedish side to rest.The Swedes felt that the RPF process was taking too long, had too muchdetail and would eventual delay implementation.Problems specifically related to the software are as follows:

Different distribution packages were widely in use in Europe and US.Since one of the requirements was to have strong local presence inboth continents, many of these packages were not selected. Thisresulted in having to select large ERP packages, which were used byprimarily manufacturing firms (different from Timberjack’s corebusiness).

Concerns of parts operations on both sides. Coopers&Lybardrecommended strong best of breed packages for the business units butthe parts operations indicated they wanted packages with strongdistribution capabilities. The compromise was to select vendors withsoftware packages in manufacturing systems with secondary strengthsin distribution and service.

When the RPF responses came in, none of the packages could doeverything. Sahlquist and Utting came to an agreement that the most