Rod Simmons is a civil service employee, managing a state Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) office. The DMV office issues annual auto registrations, renews driver’s licenses, and conducts driver examinations. The office is organized into departments, each with a supervisor reporting to Rod. The Vehicle Registration Department has eight clerks. The Motor Vehicle Operator License Department is staffed with four clerks and four examiners.Rod has become increasingly concerned because documented taxpayer complaints directed at his office have been increasing over the past year. This has recently come to the attention of his superiors at the state capitol, who have begun putting pressure on him to stop the complaints—somehow. Rod is not sure at this point how to go about it. He knows that it would be better to look at the available data to try to find the cause, or causes, rather than just giving a “pep talk” to his employees. He starts by assembling the following:
The office handles about 35,000 license or registration transactions annually.
Workforce history:
Nine of the 12 clerks have been with the office for five years or more. Three were added during the last year.
Two of the examiners have over five years’ tenure, while the other two have less than one year.
Office work schedule and hours available:
Office hours are 8:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. with one hour for lunch, Monday through Friday.
Lunch hours are staggered for clerks and examiners, half from 11:00 a.m. until noon, and the other half from noon until 1:00 p.m. (By doing this, the office is open for business nine hours per day.)
Clerk hours available/year: 23,000
Examiner hours available/year: 7,800
Supervisor hours available/year: 3,800
Procedures:
A driver’s license must be renewed every three years during the driver’s birth month.
Vehicle registration must be renewed annually within the 12th month of the current registration.
Total complaints for the last two years:
Month Complaints This Year Complaints Last Year
January 14 6
February 10 7
March 14 5
April 20 10
May 19 9
June 21 10
July 27 13
August 31 16
September 36 19
October 24 13
November 28 14
December 30 12
Totals 274 134
Total taxpayer complaints by category for the current year:
Berating by examiners 21
Clerks ignoring customers (taxpayers) 35
Incompetence 33
Long waits in line 75
Rudeness 60
All others 50
If you were Rod, how would you use the problem-solving methods and tools covered in this chapter and Chapter 15 (Links to an external site.) to highlight trends, determine how to proceed, and attempt to find root cause(s)?