In Senator Blah's office, mail consumes the full-time attention of 43 out 68 staff members, and some attention from everyone. The incoming mail load varies from 1000-5000 letters per day and 300-2000 e-mails per day. About 2% of the e-mails have complex documents attached.
The senator wants the office to respond to all mail within a week. All paper mail is opened in the mailroom, dated, and read for a first sort. "Non-issue" letters are relatively constant in volume -- about 300 letters and 100 e-mails daily. Of the rest, 98% are "issue letters", and 2% junk.
An "issue letter" is anything that advocates a position, and 90% of these are routine forms sent by orchestrated campaigns on various subjects. "First sort" sends the issue letters to the response room, non-issue letters to Mary Packard, and the junk into the trash. E-mail is similarly screened in the response room, with the non-issue messages sent to Mary Packard's computer by LAN.
The response room has 21 computers used on two shifts. The response staffers scan each paper letter into the system (this is, of course, not necessary for emails). If a return address is given (22% of cases) and the writer's name and address isn't on file, a file is created. The writer's position is entered pro or con into an issues database. (If there is no return address, then a file cannot be created but the position is still entered into the issues database.) A standard-menu response is sufficient for 92% of the letters.
Both standard and composed letters are sent by LAN to the print room. Response staffers reply to each e-mail on-line, plus send the same message to the print room in letter form. In the print room, letters are queued into separate printers for stationary and envelopes, which must then be matched for folding/insertion. The "stuffed" envelopes are then presorted and postage is applied; both of these steps use automated machinery.
The completed mail is then sent to mail pick up. Mary Packard's job is to be sure that the various "non-issue" caseworker aides and the senator himself promptly and correctly receive all mail for cases and special issues of interest. Most cases are intercessions by the Senator's office with various agencies on some constituent's behalf.
Some are requests for visits and special favors. All campaign mail must be handled by party activists or by the Senator away from the office. Campaign mail must be paid for privately; the government pays for the rest.
Mixing the two is scandal bait. Sen. Blah himself seldom writes more than one letter a day. All "non-issue" outgoing mail is completed without use of the print room and is taken to mail pick up.
Since the vast majority of the mail is "issue" mail, the office manager is quite concerned about how well the issue mail process is working. To evaluate this, one hundred constituents, who had been sent response letters last month, were surveyed by telephone.
Two constituents could not remember getting a response. Eight said that the response arrived more than three weeks after they had sent their letter.
Fourteen said that the response seemed to address a different issue than the one on which they had written. The results were not encouraging. A process improvement study is obviously called for.
To get started, draw a Pareto chart based upon the results of the survey. Which of the three types of errors should be targeted first?