Shelter_Flow

Shelter Flow One of the biggest challenges at Animal Control is to keep the shelter flow process consistently circulating to have new animals ready for adoption as soon as possible. The most frequent animals that arrived at the shelters are cats and dogs. These animals have to go through a standard process to makes sure employees are complying with state and county laws before the animals are ready for adoption. The process currently implemented has several bottlenecks that slow down the shelter flow process and do not allowed the animals to be ready for adoption on time. Bottleneck In the system currently implemented at the shelter, there are few bottlenecks that slow down the process to have dogs ready for adoption on time. For example, due to limited staff, when new animal arrive at the shelter, not all the animals are being assess or vaccinated as they should be. By California and County laws any dog that arrive should be vaccinated and assess before put into adoption. If animal are not provided the vaccine at intake, animal must stay longer at the shelter until this process is complete. Having an animal on hold for a long period of time shortened the capacity of animal staff can intake to the shelter for service. Also, in case the shelter has reached the max capacity of the animal allowed to intake, and having an officer respond to an emergency, staff will have to make arrangements to outsource to other agency for space. Outsourcing is not cost effective, it will cost the agency an additional $250 per animal if relocated. Goldratt’s Theory The Goldratt’s Theory of Constrain will be utilized to find solutions to the bottlenecks stated above. The Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints identified five points to be followed as a process to fix a bottleneck problem: “1) identify the system constraints, 2) Decide how to exploit the system constraints, 3) Subordinate everything else to the decision, 4) Elevate the system constraints, 5) If, in the previous steps, the constraints have been broken, go back to Step 1, but do not let the inertia become the system constraint (Richard, pg 2). At the shelter, there are three constraints that need to be changed: 1) Limited staff, 2) Lack of assessments, and 3) Not administering the vaccines on time. To alleviate all these three problems, Animal Control Program Supervisor will make arrangement with a volunteer program to recruit two individuals to help with the shelter. The volunteers will be trained on how to complete the assessments and on how to vaccinate the new animals. If the volunteer work out effectively, them they will be hired as extract help through the Animal Control Program. Conclusion To speed up the shelter flow process and have animals ready for adoption on time, the Animal Control Program identified three bottlenecks that were holding the process. The bottleneck were identify as the limited staff to help with assessment and administer the vaccine for the new animals. To alleviate the problem, I followed the five steps from the Goldratt’s Theory of Constraint. The theory provides effective ideas how bottlenecks should be prevented to ensure the agency process flow work effectively. References Richard B, Chase F., Robert Jacob, Nicolas J. Aquilano, Operations Management for Competitive Advantage. Chapter 18, © copyright 2006 The McGraw-hill Companies, Inc.