Oakmead is the area head office of a Social Services department in the South of England. Its catchment area deals with around100 000 people. The range of services includes an intake unit, devoted to initial assessments, care for the elderly, child care, help for the disabled and support for mental health clients. The demands placed upon Social Services can be enormous, and social workers are often in no-win situations in a range of critical areas. For example, if a child is brought into care then Social

Services may be accused of breaking up the family unit; if on the other hand a tragic event happens within a family during the time when Social Services were beginning to be involved, the consequences can be devastating for all concerned. Moreover, both the local and national press seem keen to highlight instances when things go wrong. Perhaps the most well-known of these came in 1988 in the North of England, where there was a series of reports of what were perceived as bad practice relating to detecting childabuse

Like all Social Services Oakmead is subject to a shortage of funds, and this calls for the very best of operations management to make the greatest use of limited resources, in particular with regard to how to manage a range of different operations processes. Back in 1995 the Oakmead office had been arranged by four geographic areas North, South, East and West in order to cover the geographic region. Each area had its own specialist teams, but the arrangement placed emphasis on area rather than on process. By 1997 the Oakmead office was struggling to meet clients needs, and in 1998 the County Council Head Office hired management consultants to assess the current position in order to make suggestions for improvements throughout theregion.

When the management teams in Oakmead were asked to work with consultants, a number of key problems came to light. The first was a layout problem. Consultants had been surprised, when reading the breakdown of figures for types of clients, to see that there was a low referral rate for both elderly and disabled clients. However, when they came to the Oakmead office the reason for this became clear; the reception area was on the third floor in a building that had no lift! The other problem was that there was confusion with process flows, resulting in duplication of processtasksthroughouttheoffice.Forexample,whenapotentialclienttelephonedtheoffice

the approach was very resource-driven rather than client-led. Great emphasis was placed upon wherethe person lived rather than what the needs of the client were. Once the need had been determined the client would be forwarded to a particular geographic grouping, and would then need to provide the same details that had been given in the initial telephone conversation.

After agreeing with senior-level managers that there were problems with how processes were managed, the following changes took place. First, the physical aspects needed to be changed, and so the reception area was moved to the ground floor. Not surprisingly it was then found that the number of elderly and disabled clients increased dramatically in the following 12 months by 32 per cent for elderly and 56 per cent for disabled clients, who had formerly been put off by having to climb stairs. Second, walls that had created barriers between geographic teams were demolished. Three months after the changes were made, the area manager commented: immediately, the atmosphere changed we got things done by talking with each other rather than being huddled in our separate offices.

In addition to changing the physical aspects of the layout,

Social Services were fundamentally reorganized around focused process groupings rather than by the former geographic layout. For example, when examining the flow of operations it became clear that the intake process was the high-volume centre of the system. As a result of this assessment, additional staffs were recruited to deal with the high number of intake calls. The process was rearranged so that the intake team (a high-volume, service factory process) would now quickly forward the clients details to a specialist group. Once the call was put through, the process then became that of a professional service a unique encounter between the client and the service provider. The specialist process groups care for the elderly, childcare, help for the disabled and support for mental health clients would deal with needs across the region rather than within specific geographic boundaries.

The improvements were dramatic, including response times to child-at-risk situations cut by a half; and the number of disabled people seen over a year period increased by 36 per cent.

Clearly, understanding the nature of the service delivery and then managing processes by grouping around focused areas has enormous benefits for service and manufacturing environments.

1. Describe the process choice and layout that you would expect to find in thefollowing:

a. A fast foodrestaurant

b. A generalhospital

c. A car repairworkshop.

2. Explain why flexible manufacturing systems are now in place in many high volume industries.

Provide three examples of each of the following:

a. A professionalservice

b. A massservice

c. A service factory.