Fort Wayne Improves the Lives of Its Citizens With MINITAB
MINITAB Software

While Six Sigma has a long record of success in business and industry, the newest and most exciting application of the methodology is taking place in the public arena. Governments are now beginning to use Six Sigma to improve both their fiscal health and the day-to-day lives of their citizens, and their results are impressive.

A dramatic example of this is taking place in the city of Fort Wayne, Indiana, where Mayor Graham Richard established an executive quality council and launched a MINITAB-driven Six Sigma program after his election in 2000. The council selected pothole repair and garbage collection--services that are highly visible and of great concern to residents--as the first two processes to improve.

Potholes everywhere damage cars and cause accidents, and in Fort Wayne they were costing the city thousands of dollars. Bob Kennedy, associate director of public works and utilities, led a Six Sigma project to reduce the city’s response time to pothole complaints. At the start of the project, the city repaired 77 percent of the potholes within 24 hours of receiving the complaint. Kennedy’s goal was to repair 97 percent of the potholes within 24 hours.

The first step was to gather accurate information about the problem. Many long-time department employees initially believed that most potholes occurred in the southeast quadrant of the city. But when the project team analyzed the data in MINITAB, they found that the northeast quadrant actually had the most potholes.

Looking for methods to reduce response times, the team then used MINITAB to create a main effects plot measuring response time by quadrant. This graph showed that the quickest response was in the southwest. Upon investigation, the team discovered that the southwest’s foreman relayed complaints to his workers faster, personally picking up new complaints from the central dispatch office during lunch. The team capitalized on this insight, and now the central dispatch office radios complaints directly to all work crews.

Streamlining communication, in addition to other changes, resulted in the city filling 99.6 percent of all potholes within 24 hours, and cutting the average response time from 21 hours to less than three. Reducing the response time also saved the city money. Damage claims due to potholes dropped from an average of more than $3,000 per quarter before the project to less than $1,000 after.

MINITAB software also had a positive effect on garbage collection. Uncollected trash in Fort Wayne not only irritates citizens; it costs the city’s contract vendor about $80 each time it must return to pick up a missed collection. The executive quality council asked Dawn Ritchie, solid waste manager, to tackle the problem. At the start of the project, the city averaged 92 missed collections per week. Ritchie wanted to cut that figure in half.

She started by having the city and contract vendor collect data about each missed collection. Ritchie’s project team produced MINITAB charts to rank the variables within each factor and identified worker inexperience and fatigue as two of the most significant causes of missed collections.

To retain experienced workers, the team suggested enhancing communication between workers and supervisors, improving safety training and introducing benefits such as an allowance to purchase shoes. To reduce fatigue, the team suggested creating an 18-ton limit for routes serviced by one person.

The changes helped Ritchie’s team meet its goal and then some. They reduced missed collections by 50 percent one year after the project began and strengthened the partnership between the city and its vendor.

Mayor Richard’s Six Sigma program has saved Fort Wayne $3.5 million and demonstrated that quality improvement has the potential to offer tremendous benefits to the public. And judging from the citizens of Fort Wayne’s response to the mayor’s program--they enthusiastically re-elected him with 58 percent of the vote--the public is ready to receive them.

MINITAB Software

Benefits:

• Provides a comprehensive collection of methods to analyze complex statistical data
• Produces customized charts and graphs that are simple, clear and concise
• Easy to learn and use

www.minitab.com