DBAX 9103C Week 6 Findings Section Example

Findings Their Own Subjects Will Read: The Results Section of a Consulting Study on Late Installations at a Tulsa Sign Company, Written at the Same Temperature Whether a Finding Flatters or Stings

Student Name

Walden University

DBAX 9103C: Business Consulting Research Project Stage 3

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Findings Their Own Subjects Will Read: The Results Section of a Consulting Study on Late Installations at a Tulsa Sign Company, Written at the Same Temperature Whether a Finding Flatters or Stings

A Note on Tone

Findings that their own subjects will read tend to warm up when they flatter and cool down when they do not. This section reports what a consulting study found about late installations at a family-owned sign company in Tulsa, and it holds every finding to the same form: what was observed, from which sources and how strong the evidence is. The study reviewed 214 jobs completed over six months, interviewed 23 staff and observed seven fabrication shifts and four installations. Of the 214 jobs, 158 were installed on or before the scheduled date, an on-time rate of 73.8 percent.

Where the Late Jobs Lost Time

Table 1

Main Source of Delay for the 56 Late Jobs

Each late job was assigned to the stage where it lost the most days relative to the median for its sign type.

Finding 1: Approvals Take Longer Than Schedules Assume

The median wait from permit submission to approval was 19 days across the 195 jobs with full dates, against the 10 days the company's scheduling template assumes. More than half of the late jobs lost most of their time here. Interviews with sales and installation staff agree that installation dates are often promised to customers before permits are submitted. This finding rests on records and interviews and is strong.

Finding 2: One Engineer Is a Queue

Structural signs, 86 of the 214 jobs, need drawings stamped by the company's single engineer. The median wait for drawings was 9 days, and jobs waited longest in months when several large retail rollouts overlapped. Hopp and Spearman (2008) show that when one resource is busy most of the time, small increases in demand produce large increases in waiting; the drawing queue behaved that way. This finding rests on records and two interviews with the engineer and is strong.

Finding 3: Fabrication Is Not the Main Bottleneck

Within fabrication, the median time from start to ready-for-install was 6 days, close to the template. Signs passed to the evening crew for wiring waited a median of one night, because only one licensed worker on evenings can do the electrical assembly. Output per labor hour on the evening shift, measured on three observed evenings, was within the range of the day shift. The paint booth was out of service for eleven days after its air handler failed twice; four of the seven fabrication-delayed jobs fell in those days. The maintenance record shows the repair had been postponed twice. This finding rests on records, observation and interviews and is moderate in strength, since only three evenings were observed.

Finding 4: Installation Is Rarely the Cause

Only four late jobs lost most of their time at installation, through weather or crew scheduling. Installers' main complaint, that dates were set before permits arrived, belongs to the first finding.

Evidence From Before and After the Sale Announcement

Each finding was checked against interviews from both sides of the sale announcement. Permit and engineering delays show up before and after the announcement, and the records carry them too. Criticism of the postponed paint booth repair appears mostly in later interviews, but the maintenance log supports it independently, so the finding does not depend on post-announcement accounts alone.

What the Findings Do Not Say

The findings do not assess any individual's performance. They do not show that faster approvals alone would restore the earlier on-time rate, because some delays overlap. Tracy (2010) lists fairness to participants among the markers of good qualitative work; reporting each group's part of the delay with the same evidence standard is how this section tries to meet it.

Readers Inside the Company

The owner expected the evening crew to be the main cause. The evidence does not support that view, and the section says so in the same plain form it uses for the permit finding. Block (2011) argues that a consultant serves the client best by stating findings directly, without softening those the client may resist.

References

Block, P. (2011). Flawless consulting: A guide to getting your expertise used (3rd ed.). Pfeiffer.

Hopp, W. J., & Spearman, M. L. (2008). Factory physics (3rd ed.). McGraw-Hill/Irwin.

Tracy, S. J. (2010). Qualitative quality: Eight "big-tent" criteria for excellent qualitative research. Qualitative Inquiry, 16(10), 837-851. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800410383121