The problem
Where the time was going
A telecommunications company wanted to shorten the time it took to serve customers in three areas: home internet repair, high-speed fiber installation, and the scheduling that sat behind both. Orders arrived at rates that swung by time of day, day of week, and season, which made the work hard to staff and harder to predict.
Each order then took a complicated path across functional, organizational, and system boundaries. Resources rarely matched demand and key steps did not talk to each other, so bottlenecks formed and the time between a customer's first call and a finished order was anyone's guess. That uncertainty cost time, money, and goodwill.
What we modeled
Mapping the process, then testing the fix
The company chose to model and experiment on a small scale before committing to expensive change. The work was run with ProcessModel consulting and the company's own mathematical and statistical modeling team, and it started from a striking observation: orders move through a service system in much the same way parts move through a production line.
That framing meant the proven tools of lean production could be aimed at service work. The team modeled the repair, fiber, and scheduling flows in turn, with each project taking roughly eight weeks across data collection, model building, and analysis, and used the models to test lean changes safely.
The result
The proof, and the payoff
In repair, the model showed that how jobs were handed to field technicians at the very end of the process drove overall performance. Shifting the balance toward technicians given work as needed, rather than a fixed batch for the shift, while holding total headcount steady, improved cycle times sharply, the service equivalent of small batches over large ones.
In fiber installation, the model showed that long promised dates were hiding real fluctuations, so lead time was reduced gradually rather than by decree, fixing problems as they surfaced. In scheduling, synchronizing appointments with the work technicians actually finished meant fewer missed and late appointments, less overtime, and smaller end-of-day backlogs.
Part of our work in services.