Operations management in engineering office

This paper documents a comprehensive operations anslysis with the objective of improving production levels at the engineering division of a public agency. The work content and the nature of the problem are representative of a typical engineering office and relate to such activities as filing and engineering computations, drafting, and final checking. Managerial alternatives related to resource reallocation and automation are proposed, and are expected to substantially improve productivity levels after their implementation. The study is conducted, following an organized process of data collection and analysis, problem modeling, generation and testing of alternatives, and recommendation of a service improvement program. The service improvement program aims at a gradual reduction of current backlogs in various operations and developing a stable resource configuration capable of meeting expected workloads. The line-of-balance and simulation models were used for generating and evaluating practical means of enhancing the overall performance of the engineering office.