Management Science's Impact on Service Strategy

The practice of management science has made a significant impact on the performance of the Xerox service organization. The National Service department has implemented a new service strategy for the 9,200 duplicator which provides better service to the customers at less cost to Xerox. The basic management science concept behind this service strategy is the utilization of queuing theory to reduce the service force idle time and simultaneously reduce the response time to a customer initiated call for service. The results of the queuing analysis indicated that a major productivity improvement could be achieved with mini-teams. It was decided that a three man mini-team was the best compromise (in terms of manageability) between a one-man territory and team territories which had four or more service men. Implementation of this service strategy has yielded the following results:(1) Specification to Xerox customers of response times for customers initiated service calls, and(2) An average increase in productivity of the service work force for the 9,200 in excess of 50%.