Operations Management

POM343

The facility layout of John Dickson CPA was created solely by the owner John Dickson; Dickson is a sole proprietor who works independently. The layout of this accounting firm is constrained by space. Being that the building used for office space is located at the owners primary residents, and has been converted from a garage. The overall layout consist of a desk, computer, storage (filing cabinet, baskets, pin board, shelving), and sitting area for customers. The office space does address customer involvement needs, since the majority of accounts handled need client interaction. There are several advantages in having sitting area for customers involvement; can lead to better quality of work, help eliminate errors (which could lower cost), and could also increase value to customer. In determining how to layout the office setup measurements of the garage were taken to figure out the available space. Then the desk, sitting for customer, and storage area were measured to decide appropriate furniture and placement.

Currently there are no methods in place to monitor quality quantitatively. Possible ways for Dickson to address this problem could be the use of a c-chart, which would require him to record all errors. The c-chart would allow for Dickson to see how many errors/defects occur per customer on average. The use of a p-chart could be helpful as well by giving an overall average of customers that are affected by error/defects. These two methods will be discussed in greater detail in the recommendations section of this paper. Although there are no monitoring techniques there are some metrics in place to measure the quality of services. They are as follows customer satisfaction, time of performance, errors, on time delivery, and flexibility. Customer surveys allow Dickson to measure the quality of his work through the customers’ point of view. After completing numerous jobs Dickson knows the average time it takes to complete different task such as...