Designing an expert tool for supporting (re)location decision making in large multinational companies

Abstract

Deciding on where to locate the company’s assets is one of the main issues of the corporate real estate management field. It should support aligning the organization’s real estate strategy to its organizational objectives. Understanding which information is needed by the decision-makers is crucial to make a proper judgement. However, the awareness of criteria range and their relative importance is lacking in the majority of cases. Although literature recognises a number of structures based on which the criteria should be determined, this knowledge is disperse. It is not fully exploited to enrich the process, due to the scarcity of proper expert tools. As the high level of expertise and the vast amount of knowledge is required, the companies have to rely solely on available human resources.

This thesis provides the development of an expert tool, gathering state-of-art knowledge of location criteria. It strives to improve the (re)location decision making in large companies. It is done by using a hybrid research method, combining the operational research with an empirical one. The determinants for use of certain location criteria and the criteria itself are identified in the literature and linked to each other in a computer program. Through gathering the input from stakeholders, the tool suggests a prioritised list of criteria that should be used in the process.

The expert tool is tested in a pilot study at a company in order to evaluate the effectiveness and attractiveness of the model. It is done with a series of tests and interviews in connection with a pilot case. In addition, the acceptance and trust in the system are challenged.

Overall the tool is evaluated positively. It improves the location decision-making process by increasing the stakeholders understanding of the problem, transparency level, as well as empowering the decision-makers to express their needs that could have been omitted when using a traditional approach. This leads to better assessment of location alternatives. Although the tool itself requires a number of improvements before being able to be used in practice, the idea behind it was highly valued by the users.