Background

Mississauga Transit is a relatively large

transit organization with approximatlty SOO

buses in the fleet and ovei $700$ union;zed operations staff and $100$ administrative

employees. lt is an operating division within the Transportation and Works department

which is one of five departments in the City

Corporation, the others being; Corporate

Services, Community Servic$6$s$,$ planning

and Building and the City Manager,s office.

There are many internal and external

organizational pressures that are cunenfly,

affecting the Transit organization. lntemally$,$

the City Corporation is trying to balance its budget without resorting to dramatic tax increases. As a result, divisions such as transit are faced with intense internal

competition for funding in order to meet public service expectations. As welt the City

Manager has initiated a Corporate Services review in order to develop a business planning approach to budget preparation. This involves gaining i $\text{'}$ gr$""$t$",$

understanding of the services that tti" City provides and to develop performance

measures to track the efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery. further,

Transit senior management is inierested in developing a mechanism to support the decision making process and impiove the quality of information that is used in this

process.

Extemally, there are service improvement,

altemative service delivery, legislative and accountability issues. AIso, Tiansit faces

pressure from the business community to consider contrading out intemal services such as the wasfr$-$bay and body shop. Further, the provinciai gor"mrnent has established perfonrane measures for the transit industry, which focus on operating

costs per passenger trip and the number of

passenger trips per year.

It is within this environment that Bill Moore,

Director of Mississauga Transit, sat down with his Maintenance Manager to discuss the performance issues he was having in the vehicle repair shop. The vehicle

maintenance area was composed of over fifty employees in two different garage

locations and over three different shifts.

Recently, there had been many concerns

raised about production wiih service work being backlogged and rnechanics

complaining about the lack of supervision and certain mechanics not pulling their

weight in the shop.

lssue

The core issue was how to track

performance in the maintenance area since this was one of the largest budget cost

centres. What was needed was a system to

be developed that could track performance

and alert management to problem areas before they become unmanageable. As well, management needed to ensure that the strategic goals were identified and linked to the operational functions. No mafter what system was developed there

was one caveat. lt was to involve

employees in the development of the

system for their area otherwise there would be no buy$-$in and an opportunity would be

lost to create a "line of sight" where every

employee would be able to see their

contribution to the organizations results.

Organizational change at Mississauga

Transit had traditionally been a top down

driven exercise. Upper management would

develop the strategic initiative and the front line employees were expected to make it

work. Over the years this created a culture

where employees were not empowered to

be risk takers and to tap into their creativity

based on their years of experience.

ln establishing the measurement framework

in the maintenance area Bill was also

concerned about how it would apply to other

areas of the transit organization. What

approach would be taken to implementation

in other key business units? The director

knew that rolling out a program across the

organization at the same time would be

unwieldy and encounter the risk of failure

because employees didn't embrace change

at the same rate or in the same way.

Further, since implementation of the system

would take place over several years the

resources needed to ensure success could

be a strain to the organization.

ln looking ahead to the impact such a

system would have on his operation, Mike

Smith the Maintenance manager, knew that

his working relationship with the union had

always been a challenge particularly

concerning shop floor production. The union

was not in favour of measurement systems

because they believed that management

was under constant pressure to mntmct out

internal services and that this would

represent the first step in this process. As

well, there were @ncems that it would

encourage competition between shifts.

However, some mechanics were becoming

disenchanted with the lack of discipline

associated with poor performance and were

challenging the supervisors to confront poor

performers. Also, management wanted to

develop a system that would gain union

buy$-$in and allow them to be a full participant

in all stages of system roll out.

Further, Mike was concemed about whether

appropriate information systems wou$1)$ What is the issue $($s$)$ or problem $($s$)$ that they are trying to address? $(3$ pts$.)$

$2)$ Ide