Management and Organisation Analysts
Assist organisations to improve outcomes and achieve greater efficiency by analysing, developing, maintaining and reviewing organisational architecture, processes, systems and resources.
Fixing the process without breaking the team
You are a supply chain analyst at a manufacturer, asked to find out why orders to customers keep leaving the warehouse late. It is your second week on the project. Orders are slipping, tempers are short and everyone has a different explanation. You have until Friday to give the general manager a recommendation.
Choose what you would do. Then see what happens. There are often good reasons for each choice.
Everyone knows the problem is the packing team being slow. Don't waste your time with all this mapping. Just recommend we replace the slowest people, and the numbers will fix themselves.
Agree and write the recommendation, since she works there, knows her people and has seen the packing team at its slowest
Your report names people, and the packing team stops speaking to you. Later you find the delay was upstream. You have blamed the wrong people and lost the trust you needed.
Thank her for her view, then trace an order from start to finish to see where the time is actually lost
The order spends most of its time waiting for paperwork, not being packed. Gloria is surprised. Following one order through shows what a hundred opinions cannot.
Tell her that blaming people is unhelpful and that she should look at the system instead
You are probably right, but Gloria hears criticism. Without showing her the evidence, you have lost an ally who knows the floor.
You didn't hear this from me, but the pick list is printed in the wrong order. We walk back and forth across the warehouse all day because of it. I told the office twice and nothing happened.
Thank him and test his idea by following a pick list around the warehouse
You confirm the list sends pickers zigzagging. A simple sorting change cuts the walking sharply in a trial. Raymond becomes the loudest supporter of the project.
Note it down but say nothing, since it came from an unofficial chat
Nothing happens with the tip, and Raymond decides it was pointless to speak up. Good information from the floor needs a path into the report.
Tell Gloria that Raymond said it, to show her the problem is not the packers
Gloria confronts Raymond, who feels betrayed. The staff stop sharing anything with you. Protecting people who help you is part of earning trust.
I'm short of time. Give me a straight answer: should we buy the new software system the vendor is pushing? The salesperson says it fixes everything. Yes or no?
Say yes, because the vendor's claims sound convincing and a new system looks decisive
The system is installed and the old problems move into it. Technology cannot repair a process nobody understands. You have made an expensive decision on someone else's sales pitch.
Say no, and explain that the problem is simply a matter of effort
You have spared the budget, but the explanation is too thin, and Ms Tranter wonders whether you have looked closely. Even a no needs a reason she can use.
Say not yet: fix the three process problems you found first, then see whether a system is still needed
Ms Tranter likes the clarity and the sequence. After the fixes, the delays drop, and the software question looks very different. Good advice often says what to do first.
How it went
Your Friday recommendation is clear, modest and based on what you saw yourself. Organisation and operations analysis is about asking good questions, listening to the people who do the work and resisting easy answers. Would you enjoy being a problem solver for a whole workplace?
This is a simplified, fictional situation to help you explore. It is not professional instruction or a test of your ability.
Case study: The stock that kept disappearing
A fictional case set in the operations improvement team of a fictional furniture maker with one factory and a warehouse.
The situation
Pita was a supply chain analyst at Wombat Furniture. The warehouse kept reporting missing stock, such as table legs and hinges that the computer said were on the shelves but could not be found. The warehouse supervisor suspected theft, and the owner was upset. Pita was asked to review the numbers and recommend what to do. Everyone had a theory, and several people hoped the answer would point at someone else.
What they did
Pita spent two days in the warehouse without a laptop, just watching and asking questions. She noticed that parts arrived late in the day and were put on the shelf by whoever was free, before they were scanned in. The computer then showed stock as missing, when it was just unrecorded. She suggested a simple change: nothing goes on a shelf until it is scanned, with a marked spot for incoming goods. She explained it to the team as a way of making their lives easier, not as blame.
How it turned out
The count and the shelves began to agree within a few weeks. The theft theory faded. The supervisor said he had been wrong, and the team kept suggesting small fixes. Pita learned that the people doing the work usually know where the problem lives.
What would you do?
- Why did Pita leave her laptop behind and watch the warehouse?
- How can an analyst avoid making people feel blamed?
- What might have happened if everyone had kept believing in the theft theory?