solution

Instructions: The aim of this worksheet is practice concepts covered in the “Solutions Analysis” lecture.

Best Water Company

Best Water Company is a government owned and operated entity in Best Palace City. The company offers services to roughly 350,000 residents. Services offered to the public include but is not limited to, piped water, sewage management, pipeline repairs, pumping station maintenance and repairs and water quality testing.

The company receives many calls on daily basis about issues with their pipelines. They have a simple process to manage these issues, but the volume of data makes the process tedious. Customers typically report issues over the phone, however on occasion they might send a letter to the company. The receptionist usually logs issues on a log sheet, which is passed on to the Water Works Manager at the end of each workday.

The Water Works Manager maintains issues in several spreadsheet documents. Issues are transferred from receptionist’s log sheet into the spreadsheets. Over the years, data on issues has grown exponentially, thus presenting more challenges for the Water Works Manager to complete tasks. One of the main duties of the Water Works Manager is to manager pipeline repairs. This includes generating duty lists for the field plumbers and prioritizing issues. While using spreadsheets offers a simple way to capture data, it’s quite inefficient when there’s large volumes of data to manage. Issues faced with this method include data entry errors, inaccurate reporting, low productivity – due to time wasted to complete tasks, lengthy wait times for customers, to name a few.

Ultimately, the entity wants to run a more efficient pipeline repair process. They intend to accurately prioritize issues, manage resources better and resolve customer issues in a timelier manner. Lengthy wait times to resolve issues not only lead to disgruntled and unhappy customers. On many occasions, failure to fix leaking pipelines led to damaged road surfaces, which resulted in increased repair costs. A change is needed soon.

Tasks

1. Identify two appropriate solutions to solve the problems Best Water Company is facing.
2. Explain what each solution entails. Your solution analysis must:
   1. state the solutions;
   2. briefly describe what each solution will do;
   3. state the main components of each solution;
   4. state the advantages and disadvantages of each solution.
3. State tangible and intangible benefits the company would realize if their problem is solved.