D2.

MINI CASE STUDY: Thandi is the Senior Service Adviser at a premier vehicle dealership. She and her team act as the interface between customers who want their cars serviced and repaired and the 16 technicians who carry out the work in their state-of-the-art workshop. 'There are three types of work that we have to organise,' says Thandi. 'The first is performing repairs on customers' vehicles. They usually want this done as soon as possible. The second type of job is routine servicing. It is usually not urgent, so customers are generally willing to negotiate a time for this. The remainder of our work involves working on the pre-owned cars, which our buyer has bought to sell to customers. Before any of these cars can be sold, they have to undergo extensive checks.' 'To some extent, we treat these categories of work slightly differently,' Thandi continues. 'We have to give good service to our internal car buyers, but there is some flexibility in planning these jobs. On the other extreme, emergency repair work for customers has to be fitted into our schedule as quickly as possible. If someone is desperate to have their car repaired at short notice, we sometimes ask them to drop their car in as early as possible and pick it up as late as possible. This gives us the maximum time to fit it into the schedule.' 'There are several service options open to customers,' Thandi explains. 'We can book short jobs for a fixed time and do them while they wait. Most commonly, we ask the customer to leave the car with us and collect it later. To help customers, we have ten loan cars booked out on a first-come-firstserved basis. Alternatively, the vehicle can be collected from the customer's home and delivered back when it is ready. Our four drivers who this can cope with up to 12 jobs a day.' 'Most days, we deal with 50 to 80 jobs, each taking from half an hour to a whole day,' Thandi estimates. 'To enter a job into our process, all service advisers have access to the computer-based scheduling system. On-screen, it shows the total capacity we have daily, all the jobs that are booked in, the amount of free capacity still available, the number of loan cars available, and so on. We use this to see when we have the capacity to book a customer in, and then enter all the customer's details. Our franchisor has issued "standard times" for all the major jobs. However, you have to modify these standard times a bit to consider circumstances. That is where the service adviser's experience comes in.' 'We keep all the most commonly used parts in stock,' Thandi continues, 'but if a repair needs a part that is not in stock, we can usually get it from the manufacturer's parts distributors within a day. Every evening our planning system prints out the jobs to be done the next day and the parts that are likely to be needed for each job. This allows the parts staff to pick out the parts for each job so that the technicians can collect them first thing the next morning without any delay.' 'Every day, we have to cope with the unexpected,' Thandi laughs. 'A technician may find that extra work is needed, customers may want extra work done, and technicians are sometimes ill, which reduces our capacity. Occasionally, parts may not be available, so we have to arrange with the customer for the vehicle to be rebooked for a later time. Usually, about four or five customers may forget to bring their car in. Thus, we have to rebook them at a later time.

We can cope with most of these uncertainties because our technicians are flexible in terms of the skills they have and also are willing to work overtime when needed. Also, it is important to manage customers' expectations. If there is a chance that the vehicle may not be ready for them, it shouldn't come as a surprise when they try and collect it.'

Question

1. Identify and critically discuss the four vital activities of the planning and control system that Thandi manages.

2. How does Thandi attempt to meet the sometimes conflicting requirements of customers and the workshop as she manages the planning and control system?