Akron Public Utilities Bureau (APUB) is redesigning its business practices, technology, and
organizational structure in order to improve service levels and become more competitive. One
fundamental business change has been to develop empowered work teams, a strategy which
prescribes that the staff closest to the work should help decide how it is executed, as long as the
means chosen remain within APUB's predefined performance guidelines. Numerous benefits
have been achieved from the new organizational structure. The implementation has also been
challenging due to:
extent of organizational change;
number of employees impacted;
communication challenges in a 24/7 operation;
work practice traditions developed over 75 years; and,
aging workforce not comfortable with change.
APUB engaged EMA to help with implementation of the new organization structure. EMA
utilized PinPoint, a resource loading tool developed by the firm to capture APUB's existing
workload and illustrate it in a clear, logical manner. This enabled APUB to analyze and redefine
the "right" work needed to support optimized business processes. As a result, APUB was able to:
eliminate work that was not value-added;
reduce tasks that provide low value;
create new value-added work tasks; and,
develop up-to-date standard operating procedures.
The resource loading tool provided APUB with a road map to help redistribute the work to the
new work teams. Includes figures.
| Edition : | Vol. - No. |
| File Size : | 1
file
, 880 KB |
| Note : | This product is unavailable in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus |
| Number of Pages : | 9 |
| Published : | 06/17/2005 |
