Case Study: U.S. Water Resource Agency- Flagstaff District

Case Study: U.S. Water Resource Agency- Flagstaff District

Discussion Questions:

1. As a public not-for-profit agency, who are Flagstaff District’s customers?

“Customers include consumers, who ultimately use a product; external customers, who may be intermediaries between the producer and the consumer; and internal customers, who are the recipients of goods and services from suppliers within the producing firm.” The case outlines that Flagstaff District provides 6 major products lines of goods and services, each of which has some form of customers. For the ‘development of new infrastructure and projects’, the ‘management of operation and maintenance of existing infrastructure’, and the ‘administration of regulatory requirements’, FD’s customers could be governments/local councils representing the good of tax/rate payers. For ‘performance of reimbursable work for others’, customers could be anyone requisitioning work from FD. For ‘provision of emergency response and recovery’, customers could be those affected by emergency situations, can include households, businesses, etc. For the ‘delivery of defence, environmental, and restoration programs’, the customers could really include everyone in the Flagstaff District as they will be affected in some way by the programs.

2. How might the district define quality? How could it use this definition to evaluate its success in “competing” with other entities?

Quality is commonly defined as ‘meeting or exceeding customer expectations’. As FD encompass such a wide range of customers due to their many products and services, defining quality for them is hard. From a product- and value-based viewpoint, quality would be defined as the satisfaction of consumers to the tangible products and services provided; e.g. optimization of existing infrastructure to meet local needs. From a transcendent viewpoint, quality for FD might be defined as customers’ confidence in the preparedness of them for disaster relief and...