Justification for Increasing Headcount
Justification for Increasing Headcount:
Applying the Theory of Constraints on Logical Organizational Processes
Supporting Ford Motor Company's eRoom Infrastructure
Prepared For: Leonard Sholtis
Prepared By: Adam Chalmers
MGT565
Fall 2005
Walsh College
Abstract
Though not applied to traditional manufacturing processes as we have studied in class, the purpose of this case analysis is to apply the Theory of Constraints (TOC) to the operations of Ford Motor Company's EHTSS (a.k.a. Server Hosting Operations). Moreover, the goal is to justify to the EHTSS management team the necessity to provide more robust support for the eRoom infrastructure. Through harvesting five months worth of GIRS support tickets, the TOC analysis uncovered two constraints: (1) a physical constraint the current team of two systems administrators dedicated to eRoom infrastructure support did not have enough capacity to properly support that environment and (2) a policy-based constraint as a byproduct of the analysis, a range of tickets matching a specified criterion were found. The constraint was that these tickets could be offloaded to first level support (SOC ) but were not. To quantify the results, a Six Sigma statistical analysis tool called a chi-square goodness-of-fit test was performed twice on a nonrandom sample of GIRS tickets to validate our constraints. The results showed significant evidence that an increase in head count to establish a dedicated eRoom support team is justified and that there are tickets that can be offloaded to the SOC. Additionally, these results will show EHTSS management that streamlining, expediting, and improving the overall support processes will resolve customer satisfaction issues, improve EHTSS metrics, and reduce the ancillary costs in supporting the eRoom infrastructure. By comparing and contrasting production management TOC principals with TOC and logical processes I will reveal how EHTSS can utilize TOC to improve the support of Ford's
Applying the Theory of Constraints on Logical Organizational Processes
Supporting Ford Motor Company's eRoom Infrastructure
Prepared For: Leonard Sholtis
Prepared By: Adam Chalmers
MGT565
Fall 2005
Walsh College
Abstract
Though not applied to traditional manufacturing processes as we have studied in class, the purpose of this case analysis is to apply the Theory of Constraints (TOC) to the operations of Ford Motor Company's EHTSS (a.k.a. Server Hosting Operations). Moreover, the goal is to justify to the EHTSS management team the necessity to provide more robust support for the eRoom infrastructure. Through harvesting five months worth of GIRS support tickets, the TOC analysis uncovered two constraints: (1) a physical constraint the current team of two systems administrators dedicated to eRoom infrastructure support did not have enough capacity to properly support that environment and (2) a policy-based constraint as a byproduct of the analysis, a range of tickets matching a specified criterion were found. The constraint was that these tickets could be offloaded to first level support (SOC ) but were not. To quantify the results, a Six Sigma statistical analysis tool called a chi-square goodness-of-fit test was performed twice on a nonrandom sample of GIRS tickets to validate our constraints. The results showed significant evidence that an increase in head count to establish a dedicated eRoom support team is justified and that there are tickets that can be offloaded to the SOC. Additionally, these results will show EHTSS management that streamlining, expediting, and improving the overall support processes will resolve customer satisfaction issues, improve EHTSS metrics, and reduce the ancillary costs in supporting the eRoom infrastructure. By comparing and contrasting production management TOC principals with TOC and logical processes I will reveal how EHTSS can utilize TOC to improve the support of Ford's