network made up of a manager and two analysts. Purchasing has a manager and several buyers. These two groups are very formal and structured. Problems are reported to the manager and passed up the line if necessary. Throughout PCS there is an electronic network. The company is spread out over four local campuses and nine regional offices. E-mail is the communication method of choice. The sales group is electronic and meets formally each quarter with the sales managers and directors. Even within my department, for documentation, e-mail is the communication method. Prior to working in Materials Management, the group I work with would be defined as team based and boundaryless. The person in charge wanted to build a self managed team that would function without boundaries. Our team, RECAP III, was made up of employees from each department in the company. Gary Dessler defines boundaryless as having fewer boundaries than traditional structural mechanisms. Standard operating procedures and process flows began to be created both for the core business and RECAP III as well. What PCS needed to do was to build the organization around the new software and the software around the customer (Executive Edge, 1996, p. 2). These changes were to be made to meet the needs of the customer, based on what they told us what they wanted. I have tried to bring this strategy to Materials Management. I began creating Standard Operating Procedures. For this department having been together only one year, there was little to no documentation. I have looked for ways to make the workflow ...
