Open Collections

A model to determine service facility requirements

University of British Columbia

Credit unions have difficulty in estimating the facility requirements which will enable them to provide adequate member service. Due to the recent growth in membership, most credit unions have had to enlarge their facility to one which would adequately accommodate the present membership as well as provide for expected future growth in operations. The high cost of expansion has made it necessary to accurately determine their facility requirements. B.C. Central Credit Union, a service centre which provides professional assistance to credit unions and co-operatives throughout British Columbia, was concerned with the solution of this problem and first looked to how other organizations tried to solve their facility planning problems. A number of organizations have developed, or attempted to develop, facility planning models. Some have resulted in complete failure and have been abandoned. Others could not answer enough of the questions that credit union managers needed to know about their facility requirements. The management of B.C. Central Credit Union decided tto acquire the services of the author for the purpose of designing and implementing a facility planning model. After a preliminary investigation of the problem and discussions with credit union managers, it was decided that a simulation model would be the most appropriate management tool to use. The scope of the project was to develop and implement a simulation model to accurately determine present and future teller facility requirements (wickets and queuing area) which will enable a credit union to provide adequate member service. The teller facility is simulated under varying conditions to determine the required number of wickets and queuing area for a given credit union. It is shown that the model is sensitive to the approximation of the teller service time distribution and the method of data collection on member arrivals. A credit union's teller facility requirements as well as the level of service are shown to be very dependent on the operating policy to regulate the number of wickets which are available. At present, two credit unions have benefited considerably from the simulation model. In both cases, the management of the credit union had decided to build a new enlarged facility because the existing credit union could not adequately accommodate its members. The simulation model showed that only a change in the facility layout was required. The credit unions reversed their decision to build a new facility and simply changed the layout. Both are presently operating effectively with the new layout and have avoided the expense of a new building.

Text

2010-01-25

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/19126

Business Administration

University of British Columbia

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