5.11 End-of-Topic Case: The Challenge of Trucking Operations and Driver Shortages
A regional trucking company has just hired you. They have operations throughout six southern states: Florida, Georgia, South and North Carolina, Tennessee, and Alabama. Like many truckload operations, the company has had difficulty attracting and retaining good drivers.
During the interview process, company leaders noticed that you had studied Lean Six Sigma. You are now the “expert” in your company on lean improvement. The owner wants you to look at the difficulty of attracting drivers and provide him recommendations on how to solve the driver shortage in the company.
After doing the proper research, you can identify significant challenges to being a driver.
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Drivers are often away from home and have poor schedules.
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At times, the work is physically demanding, and there are often long, unpaid waits at shipping docks.
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Your company is among the highest-paid per mile in the industry, but you still cannot get enough drivers.
Questions
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Using the tools in this chapter, what approach would you take to analyze this problem?
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Assuming that you could collect data, what data would you want to collect and from whom?
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How would you organize your findings and present them to the company’s owner?
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These appear to be simple questions, but you now realize there are numerous tools that can help you. How would you organize your data collection and analysis process using these tools?