A Challenge in Organizations

The chapter intends to exemplify process innovation challenges and trends. A case is studied—stock management—at an important enterprise in Portugal. It involves the analysis and improvement of this process within a firm related with gas distribution. Stock management is critical to deliver value to other processes such as sales. This issue has led to a focus on improving the inventory process. As it involves sub-value chains, this work highlights a comparison between current process and its proposed redesign. DMAIC method (define-measure-analyze-improve-control) is systematically applied, and new data emerge from tests made in the ERP (enterprise resource planning system) of the company. The improved process tends to greatly reduce execution time, as well as the number of actors and amount of information circulating outside the system. Other aspects are studied in line with new trends in ERP platforms due to cloud computing.