Overview (1 pt)
Furniture is all around us but not many take time to consider what it takes to create these essential components of our homes. To create useful and strong furniture a carpenter needs to get the best raw materials for the project, taking it from a mere woodwork project to an art. A good organizing for these raw materials enables the carpenter to achieve these goals. Wood shops go some way into trying to achieve this with organizing systems that enable interaction between the customer and resources, and I will try to analyze how they try to achieve this.
What resources are being used? (2 pts)
The resources being organized are physical wood pieces. Customers visit wood shops with various woodworking projects they intend to do and hence need varied types and sizes of wood pieces for each. Woodworking projects range from flooring, tiling, roofing to creating cupboards or bookshelves. The resources, i.e. wood are passive and need interaction initiated on them by staff or customers.
Wood in the shop consists at the most abstract level, the type of wood i.e. natural wood blocks, which are mostly used for framing. The other type is wooden boards which are manufactured and are mostly used for making surfaces. Natural wood contains categories for hard wood and soft wood that is then followed by categories based on the names of the tree e.g. mahogany or teak. Wood boards are mostly manufactured to serve different purposes and thus are categorized on their use such as block boards, hard boards and vinyl
Why are the resources organized? (2 pts)
Resources are organized primarily on the use warrant to serve customers and staff in the shop. The shop intends to sell the wood to customers hence it must provide a system which allows them to interact with the resources. For customers resources are organized so that it is easier for them to select the wood they want to use and also know the other types of wood that is can substitute the one they originally wanted. The vocabulary problem where differently descriptions are used by customers and the shop has to be addressed necessitates the need for an organizing system which allows customers to easily find the wood they want based on the physical properties.
Since customer transactions are usually infrequent the organizing system can often be seen to have intentional arrangement to make it easier for staff to interact with resources. For staff they would want to organize resources primarily on the basis of the interactions they want to have with the resources. Wood pieces that need to be replaced often will therefore be organized strategically to enable this interaction. Those that may need other interactions such as cutting or modifications will also need special organization that will enable the achievement of this requirement.
How much are the resources organized? (2 pts)
Abstraction is of little concern in the system with granularity being more pertinent. Customer requirements for resources differ greatly between projects, making precision a key factor in the system. A granular organization is thus implemented as they speed at which resources and recall are weighed less. The organizing principles of the system are based on the physical attributes facet. Wood shops usually implement multi-level hierarchical categories in their organizing system. Firstly the type of wood needed for each woodwork project requires hence that the resources be categorized on this property. The dimensions needed for the project also entail that the same wood be categorized differently on many properties of dimensions such as length, width or thickness of the board. Organizing systems for wood shops are very flexible to allow new categories to be accommodated because requirements for wood change greatly over time coupled with changes in supply. Other interactions that can happen on the resources will also affect organization. For example, wood planks may need to be cut for the customer thus this will affect the organization.
When are the resources organized? (1 pt)
Organization usually occurs at the start of business day where staff replenishes stock levels of wood in the shop to desired levels. Replenishment can also occur during the day if stock of a particular wood runs out or goes beyond a minimum set level. Resource organization also occurs every time when new resources are created in the system. This is when the shop either buys a new type of wood or when resources are added to the system. Interactions with the resources can also result in organization of resources. For example, if a wood plank is cut into smaller pieces, the new resources created will result in them being organized in different places or into one place where customers can get random pieces.
Who does the organizing? (1 pt)
The staff at the wood shop organizes the resources. They are expected to hold some special knowledge of the various types of wood in the shop together with some understanding of the uses of the wood. Since they are expected to move the wood for checking out, they can help decide where the resources should be located with the manager at the shop coordinating. They have to take into consideration the ease at which customers can interact with the resources whilst making sure they are able to navigate and select resources to checkout. Safety for customers is another consideration they factor in thus health and safety monitors can influence organization in a system.
Other considerations (1 pt)
The traditional wood shop consists of a medium sized shop, which can store all the wood in one area, however as some changes are happening to bigger shops were customers only see samples of the wood in product catalogs with well-defined resource descriptions. As such these systems are organized have catalogs as the different organizing system from the warehouse where the actual wood is stored and selected for delivery to the customer.