Macroergonomics in the Context of Vendor-Customer Technology Transfer

Abstract

The transfer of a system-level product from vendor to customer typically requires that the customer change both business processes and organizational structures as part of the system implementation process. A macroergonomic approach was used to analyze the transfer of an image based check processing system to customer sites and identify opportunities to improve the transfer process. The analysis identified a lack of knowledge of the organizational, administrative and managerial changes that would be introduced by the new technology as a potential risk to the project implementation schedule. The analysis indicated that establishing a knowledge base covering five non-technical areas (general system familiarity, worksite preparation, human resources, operations and system support) and transferring that knowledge base to the customer's implementation team would minimize the potential schedule risk. A specialized consulting role was created to transfer the knowledge base to the customer's implementation team through a series of seminar sessions tied to specific implementation milestones. Each session focused on assisting the customer's implementation team in developing an action plan to allocate and schedule the resources necessary to carry the project through to the next milestone. The structure of the knowledge base and the presentation format for the consulting service were verified during initial trials at customer sites. A curriculum of classroom instruction and apprenticeship was then developed to train the consultants. Qualitative feedback from customers indicated that the service was perceived to provide value to the participants.