Stronger competition and more demanding customers require companies to deliver exceptional service and ultimately offer differentiated value propositions in an efficient way. To do so successfully, companies need to innovate and continuously improve their service models, but with a holistic view that ensures coherence between strategy and operations, as well as between the needs of customers and employees.

La gestión del cambio en una organización posiblemente sea una de las pruebas más difíciles a las que un gestor se puede enfrentar. Ello suscita dos preguntas interesantes: ¿Por qué la gestión del cambio resulta tan difícil para las empresas? y ¿qué podemos hacer para mejorar las probabilidades de éxito? A este respecto, existe una larga lista de recomendaciones que cubren desde aspectos relacionados con la gestión del proceso, hasta perspectivas centradas en la complejidad de la naturaleza humana, y particularmente su conocida resistencia al cambio. En cuanto a la primera vertiente, la gestión del proceso del cambio, cabe destacar que la mejora continua que en numerosas empresas se lleva aplicando desde décadas con bastante más éxito que la reingeniería, nos ha enseñado claramente que el cambio es exactamente eso; un proceso y no un evento al que se llega en un momento dado. Respecto a la naturaleza humana frente al cambio, no podemos olvidar que, para empezar, los fracasos anteriores son el lastre de cada nuevo intento de cambio. Pero también es verdad que las personas se lanzan voluntariamente a cambios tan radicales como fundar una familia, por ejemplo. Se trata pues de conseguir entender mejor los entresijos de la mente humana en su actitud frente al cambio, y acabar alineando la parte más racional del cerebro con la emocional. Esto seguramente no suponga una garantía de éxito, pero el intento ya merece la pena si con ello mejoran nuestras probabilidades de éxito a la hora de gestionar el cambio en una empresa

The aim of this article is to contribute empirically to the theory development on planning instabilities in industrial practice by studying in depth an industrial company which has difficulty in meeting its customer deadlines and faces a significant order backlog. Planners at the various levels of the hierarchical planning system and order chasers on the shop floor end up rescheduling open orders and updating (de facto) lead times very frequently when trying to meet deadlines, but eventually are not able to improve order fulfilment. Only after the introduction of an advanced planning system (APS) and centralisation of planning decisions in one single department, planning results could be improved significantly, accomplishing 97% of customer due dates and reducing order backlog drastically. These kinds of planning instabilities have received considerable attention due to their negative impact on planning performance; however, research has been limited to theoretical (e.g. simulation) settings and has focused on specific ways to overcome instabilities. Our main contribution is an empirical investigation of the underlying mechanism of such planning instabilities, with a particular focus on the impact on stability of human and organisational factors. Our findings clearly suggest that structure and frequency significantly influence stability, but that the underlying mechanisms are more subtle and differentiated than assumed in the modelling literature. A further contribution of the article to theory development is the introduction of the general term 'planning bullwhip' for such kind of planning instabilities, by integrating in an aggregate manner the different terminologies that have been coined in extant research