MSHR 6610 Week 6 Theory of Constraints Brief Example

Keep the Certification Pipeline Full: A Constraint Brief for a Utility Contact Center That Treats Billing Certification Capacity as Fixed and Plans Hiring, Scheduling and Routing Around It

Student Name

Walden University

MSHR 6610: Aligning Human Resources with Business Operations

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Keep the Certification Pipeline Full: A Constraint Brief for a Utility Contact Center That Treats Billing Certification Capacity as Fixed and Plans Hiring, Scheduling and Routing Around It

The Constraint

New agents at Northfork Power & Light's contact center cannot take billing calls until they finish a six-week billing certification, and the training team can run only one cohort of about twelve at a time. That is the constraint. It limits how quickly the center can add capacity where it most needs it, because roughly 40 percent of evening calls involve a balance, a payment arrangement or a disconnection notice and must go to a certified agent.

The Frame

Goldratt and Cox (2004) argued that every system has a constraint that limits its output, and that improving anything other than the constraint does not raise the system's output. They proposed five steps: identify the constraint, decide how to exploit it, subordinate everything else to that decision, elevate the constraint if needed and then look for the next one. Applied here, the question is not how to hire faster in general. It is how to keep the certification pipeline running at full capacity every week, and how to arrange everything else so that it never sits idle or half empty.

How the Pipeline Is Wasted Today

Over the past year, the pipeline has run well below its capacity of about eight cohorts of twelve. Four things have wasted it. First, cohorts started with as few as seven trainees because recruiting was not timed to fill them. Second, there were three gaps of two to four weeks between cohorts while the training team waited for enough hires. Third, about one trainee in six dropped out during certification, often in the first two weeks, when trainees realized the evening schedule did not suit them. Fourth, two cohorts were interrupted when trainers were pulled onto the phones during storms.

The center certified about 45 agents in a year when it could have certified about 96. With annual attrition among certified agents of about 30, the center barely kept pace.

Table 1

Certification Pipeline, Past Twelve Months

Composite utility. Figures are illustrative.

Exploiting the Constraint

Exploiting the constraint means making sure every seat in every cohort is filled and every cohort finishes. The brief proposes three changes. First, recruiting runs on the training calendar: the recruiter fills each cohort to fourteen offers two weeks before the start date, expecting two to withdraw. Second, the evening schedule is shown to candidates during the interview and in a short job preview, so trainees who cannot work evenings do not start. Third, trainers are removed from the storm call-out list; storm calls go to back-office staff and the automated outage line instead.

Subordinating Everything Else

Subordinating means that other parts of the operation accept some loss of their own efficiency to keep the constraint full. Hiring targets are set in cohorts, not in monthly headcount. Schedules for new hires are built before they start, so each cohort graduates directly into evening shifts where certified agents are scarcest. Routing changes so that billing calls are routed first to certified agents on evenings and non-billing calls are routed preferentially to uncertified agents, which keeps certified agents' time for the work only they can do. Gans et al. (2003) describe skill-based routing as a way to match calls to agents' skills; here it protects the scarcest skill.

Elevating the Constraint

If the pipeline runs at full capacity and the center still falls short, the constraint can be elevated by adding a second trainer team to run overlapping cohorts. That costs about $140,000 a year in trainer salaries and should be considered only after the first three changes have been in place for two cohorts. Goldratt and Cox (2004) warned that elevating a constraint before exploiting it wastes money; the center has not yet used the capacity it has.

Measuring the Pipeline

The pipeline should be reported weekly in its own terms: seats filled at each cohort start, trainees still enrolled at weeks two and six and weeks with no cohort running. These three numbers show at a glance whether the constraint is being exploited, and they belong in the operations director's weekly review alongside service level.

What Moves Next

Once the pipeline runs full, the constraint is likely to move. The most probable new constraint is the evening schedule itself: whether enough certified agents are willing to work evenings. The turnover analysis and the recommendation memo later in the course take that up. Becker and Huselid (2006) argue that HR strategy should focus on the positions and capabilities that most limit the firm's performance; certification capacity is one such capability here.

References

Becker, B. E., & Huselid, M. A. (2006). Strategic human resources management: Where do we go from here? Journal of Management, 32(6), 898-925. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206306293668

Gans, N., Koole, G., & Mandelbaum, A. (2003). Telephone call centers: Tutorial, review, and research prospects. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, 5(2), 79-141. https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.5.2.79.16071

Goldratt, E. M., & Cox, J. (2004). The goal: A process of ongoing improvement (3rd rev. ed.). North River Press.