Running Head: STATE AUTOMOBILE LICENSE RENEWALS 1

State Automobile License Renewals

Student’s name,

Professor’s name,

Course title

Date
STATE AUTOMOBILE LICENSE RENEWALS 2

Summary of the Case Study

Being the manager of a metropolitan branch of the state department of motor vehicles,

Henry Coupe had to perform several steps in an attempt to analyze the operations of driver’s

license renewal process. Among the steps involved were the review of renewal applications for

correctness, processing and recording payments, checking file for violations and restriction,

conducting eye tests, photographing the applicant and issuing temporary licenses. During his

analysis, Coupe discovered that work was unevenly distributed among clerks and one of the

clerks was shortcutting her tasks in order to keep up with others. Coupe also discovered that the

actions had to be done in a logical sequence to achieve correctness. Besides the fact that Coupe

was under pressure to reduce costs and increase productivity, he also needed to come up with a

way to accommodate the demand for renewals.

Challenges Faced By the Organization

One of the main challenges experienced by State Automobile License Renewals was the

uneven distribution of work among the clerks. This meant that while some clerks were idle,

others were completely overwhelmed by work which reduced their efficiency. Secondly, due to

the amount of workload involved in checking for violations, Henry Coupe found that the clerk

involved would find a way to shortcut her tasks in order to keep up with her colleagues. As a

result, there was a buildup of long lines when demand was at its maximum.

Appropriateness of Actions Taken By the Organization

The main step taken by State Auto Renewals was to divide the license renewal process

into six steps and each step assigned to a single clerk. Although this helped improve the overall

efficiency of the whole process, it still wasn’t enough as some of the steps were more involving
STATE AUTOMOBILE LICENSE RENEWALS 3

than others. As a result, some of the clerks found themselves overwhelmed by their work which

reduced their individual efficiency.

How to Improve Efficiency in the Organization

There are two main options that would help increase efficiency in State Automobile

License Renewals. First, Henry Coupe can decide to increase the number of workstations so that

the process time in the bottleneck activities can be reduced. The bottleneck activities which can

be identified as checking file for violations and conducting eye tests can have one more

workstation added to the existing one. As a result, the processing time in “check or violations”

activity would be reduced to 30 seconds while the processing time for “conduct eye test” activity

would be reduced to 20 seconds. Secondly, Coupe can decide to combine certain activities to

produce other cycle times.

Maximum Number of Applications per Hour That the Current Configuration Can Handle

Step 3 of the License renewal process (check for violations and restrictions) takes the

longest time to be processed (60 seconds). This means that if each step of the process was to be

carried out by a single clerk, all the clerks would have to wait for the one handling step three as it

takes the longest time. The task “Check for violations and restrictions” is, therefore, the

bottleneck activity in the six-step process. The maximum applications per hour will, therefore, be

60 given by;

1 hour ×60 ×60 seconds

=60 applications per hour
60 seconds per application

In a balanced line process, all steps should take approximately the same amount of time,

but this is hard to achieve. However, I can be solved by increasing the number of individuals
STATE AUTOMOBILE LICENSE RENEWALS 4

working on the bottleneck activity. By doing this, the amount of time required to perform each

activity is divided by the number of individuals working on the activity thus creating efficiency.

Number of Applications per Hour if a Second Clerk is added to Check for Violations

Based on the information provided, it takes approximately 60 seconds to check for

violations and restrictions. If a second clerk is added, the processing time would be reduced to 30

seconds (60seconds / 2workstations). The bottleneck activity now becomes conducting an eye

test which takes approximately 40 seconds to perform. The number of applications per hour

becomes 90 and is given by;

1 hour ×60 ×60 seconds

=90 applications per hour
90 seconds per application

Maximum Number of Applications That Can Be Processes if a Second Clerk is Added

Anywhere

Without adding new clerks, it would be possible to process 90 applications per hour. The

activities in step 1, 2 and 3 would need to be combined to form one activity taking an average of

105 seconds. The newly formed activity would have three workstations making the processing

time for the newly combined activity to be 35 seconds (105 seconds/3). The tasks in a process

can be creatively rearranged and combined to produce new cycle times. However, the activities

must be performed in a logical sequence

How to Modify the Process to Accommodate 120 Applications per Hour

To accommodate 120 applications per hour, the number of workstations in step 3 and 4

would have to be increased so that the processing time for each step is 30 seconds and 20

seconds respectively as shown in the table below.

STATE AUTOMOBILE LICENSE RENEWALS 5

Steps Average Number of Processing Applications Cost per

time Workstations time per hour hour

1 15 1 15 240 12
2 30 1 30 120 12
3 60 2 30 120 24
4 40 2 20 180 24
5 20 1 20 180 16
6 30 1 30 120 18
Labor cost per hour 106
Cost of camera per hour 10
Total cost per hour 116
Cost per renewal $0.97

Reference

Heizer, J. H., & Render, B. (2014). Operations management: Sustainability and supply chain

management. Boston: Prentice Hall.