National Air Express
The business problem facing National Air Express is the majority of customers want pickups as late as possible, around 5:00 p.m., but there are not enough drivers to satisfy this need. I would say a major problem is that the station manager, Frank Smith, is focusing on the budget constraints, which is important; however, the needs of the customers must be met. He is considering adding capital expenses when business does not seem to be increasing. Smith is preparing his quarterly budget report, which will be presented at the Southeast regional meeting in the following week. He is very concerned about adding capital expense to the operation, to meet the demands of current customers, when business has not increased …show more content…
This way, drivers with a good performance rating can be encouraged by incentives to keep up the good work, and others will be motivated to perform better. The feedback can also be used to help generate new ways of conducting business operations and identify areas for improvement in current processes.

Case questions: 1. Is the productivity measure of shipments per day per truck still useful? Are there alternatives that might be effective?
The productivity measure of shipments per day per truck is a very useful tool in determining how effective each truck can be. The fleet consists of 24 trucks, this can be used to determine the productivity ratio of each truck of the number of shipments received per day. While the productivity measure of shipments per day per truck is still useful, it needs to be factored together with the customer service standards that Smith wants incorporated. Rather than shipments per day per truck, he might choose to measure productivity in terms of dollars per day per truck or cumulative dollars for each customer. For example, the fact that a truck has two shipments per day is not as useful as knowing that Customer A ships items virtually every workday, while Customer B ships items approximately once a month. If Smith tracks the frequency of shipment per customer and factors in the dollars of profit he is making, he will arrive at a more useful