Case Studies: service sector vs. manufacturing

1. Service: Softsys Ltd* - a leading software development company

Bill, a lead auditor, arrived at Softsys Ltd, a leading software development company that has been certified under ISO 9001-2000 QMS for the last three years, for recertification.

One Softsys’ department, ‘Alpha’, provides maintenance support to on-site software teams and carries out small modifications/improvements to the software. The objective set by Softsys for this activity is achieving 100% success and 0% delay in delivering the jobs within the time limit – 24 hours for critical jobs, 48 hours for medium jobs and 72 hours for low priority jobs.

In monitoring the projects for adherence to these criteria, Bill discovered that all jobs were completed within the deadline and there was no delay. However, the chart analyzing the jobs had a footnote which mentioned an adjusted time taken to reach the deadline.

When Bill checked with the team leader he was told that the time taken due to non-response of the customer or delay attributable to the customer was deducted to arrive at adjusted time taken. This was then compared with the specified time limit and when calculated in this manner, the result was that there was no delay. But if actual unadjusted time taken for each job was considered, there was delay beyond the specified time in 10% of the cases. The team leader was of the opinion that since the delay was attributable to the customer it was not a non-conformity. Bill noted the fact and made a mental note of discussing this with his team members and the MR.

In the next department, ‘Zeta’, larger jobs were executed for customers. Bill found that for each job that came up, the estimated man hours and time taken in days was first worked out and conveyed to customers, then was agreed upon before work began. It was found that in more than 75% of cases the actual time taken was 15% to 30% less than the intimated time. When asked, the project manager, Mr Sharp, proudly explained that his team was very efficient, had considerable experience, was highly motivated and he was happy about their consistent above average performance.

The next department, ‘Omega’, dealt with defect removal and enhancements. Here, Bill found the people were relatively at ease. On enquiry, he found that the work was slack, mainly due to the fact that the software product they dealt with had recently been launched, so little defect removal or enhancement work was expected to be undertaken in the near future. Bill asked the project manager in charge, Mr Laidback, what his staff did during idle time? He replied that as they deal with specific software they cannot work on other projects and as the workload can increase at any time, there is no point in redeploying them. As far as the idle time interval, Mr Laidback smiled and told Bill that Omega had worked so hard in the past five months, that they were letting staff enjoy a well-earned rest. In any case, employees surf the net, brush up their programming skills and sometimes play some games that sharpen their responses. ‘Keeps them in good sprits,’ Mr Laidback exclaimed.

At the end of the day, Bill and his team sat down for a debriefing/review, at which the MR, Mr Softy, was also present, to finalize the findings before the closing meeting.

 

Scenarios

  • Regarding the first incident in department Alpha, Bill is of the opinion that for effective monitoring of projects the unadjusted time taken should be compared against deadlines and it is a minor non-conformity. The MR feels this would be too harsh as sometimes customers did sit on queries and responded at their will and surely delay attributable entirely to the customers should not result in non-conformance/non-meeting of objectives as this could be unfair. What, according to you, is the right approach?
  • On hearing about the above average performance of Zeta department, one of the team members, Mr Fast, looked at Bill and remarked: ’What do you make of this above average performance? I think they are allowing themselves a wide margin while setting the effort and time schedule, and that’s what’s making them look so good. I think there is scope for improvement’. What is your opinion about it?
  • Bill was a bit disturbed about the idle time arising in Omega department, but the team members felt that it was just a one-off case of those slack periods which occasionally arise and it didn’t warrant much concern. What is your opinion about it?

Solutions

  • Situation 1: The situation in Alpha department cannot technically be termed as a failure to meet objectives and hence cannot be viewed as a non-conformity. However, if deadlines are repeatedly adjusted in this fashion it could eventually lead to customer dissatisfaction and reduced efficiency.  It could become a tendency to increasingly try to shift the blame onto the customers. Ideally, therefore, though the objectives need not be revised Softsys Ltd should consider tracking unadjusted timelines against the objectives/deadlines to provide early warning and trends to improve performance. This can be a recommendation for improvement.
  • Situation 2: An above average performance in terms of time could have resulted due to compromise/cutting corners in some other aspect, such as software quality or some other metric. This needs to be checked. Ideally, what should be recommended and done is a cause analysis to identify the reasons for less time taken. This could result in product improvement or a better setting up of the time objectives which might be loose or have a wider margin, thereby preventing excess slack in the time schedules.
  • Situation 3: Omega Department is a typical case of software companies faced with erratic work loads. Although not a disturbing issue by itself, the department in-charge could have been more proactive and utilized the idle time better: developing internal manuals, processing documentation and utilizing the time to provide need based training to the staff. The free time could also be used for house keeping or creating re-usable components. There is definitely a scope for improvement by using spare time for employee skill enhancement and housekeeping work.