Question

The queues were a mile long at the bank and Sipho Zulu who was on his 30 minute lunch break was getting extremely frustrated. He needed to speak with a finance consultant about certain documentation that had to be submitted to ensure that this account would be kept open. If this issue was not resolved, his salary would not be transferred into his account and he had bills to pay. Tempers were flaring in the queue and he could hear several customers complaining about such poor customer service. In fact, many of them were threating to close their accounts. The bank staff did not seem to be too concerned with the situation and even the bank manager was nowhere to be seen. Sipho, who had studied Operations Management knew that this was a capacity problem. If you were the bank manager: 3.1 Identify the factors that determine effective capacity in a bank and (12) 3.2 Develop an action plan on how you would resolve this problem. (13)

Answer 1

3.1 The factors that determine effective capacity in a bank are:

• Service factor: The rate at which customers arrive at the bank
• Process factor: The rate at which bank wants to process the customer requests
• Facilities: The size of the bank and the infrastructure available
• Human factor: The competencies and skill level of bank employees
• Policy factors: The management policies which rule the capacity options at bank
• External factors: The performance standards set by other banks

3.2 The action plan to solve the capacity problem at bank:

• Identify the major problem with the capacity
• Discuss the problem with the primary stakeholders and get their perspective
• Identify the major factors which may impact the problem
• Develop an action plan to tackle each of the factors identified above
• Each factor must be assigned to a set of stakeholders
• The solution for tackling the problem must be documented thoroughly for future reference
• The implementation of the solution must be monitored to identify any deviations
• Adequate control must be established by the team on the capacity constraints