Teaching Note | HBS Case Collection | 1990 (Revised from original version)

Sedalia Revisited, Teaching Note

Abstract

Teaching Note for (9-687-004).

Keywords: Factories, Labs, and Plants; Design; Quality; System; Employees; Framework; Competition; Production; Strategy;

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Shapiro, Roy D. "Sedalia Revisited, Teaching Note." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 690-024, February 1990. (Revised from original January 1990 version.)

Delwarca Software provides business software to large corporate clients around the world. The firm serves customers who prefer to assemble corporate solutions using a combination of software programs from various suppliers rather than implementing a single enterprise resource planning system. Consequently, Delwarca must provide telephone support services for complex software-hardware interaction and performance problems in addition to the typical software support issues around software installation and upgrades, malware attacks, and processing failures. The manager of the remote support unit implemented a new triage program for customer calls hoping to reduce customer wait time, improve customer satisfaction, and reduce costs. After one year, customer dissatisfaction is at an all-time high and he must perform a quantitative analysis of the current process, considering wait times for customers as well as cost per call, before making a final recommendation. This case can be used in a first-year MBA course in Service Management or Operations Management or a course in industrial engineering. It can also be used to introduce simple queuing theory.

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