Organizational design for building capacity

In terms of building capacity, the impact of Driving for a Better Future will be directly proportional to the number of low cost automobiles it’s able to deliver to its target population. Where the goal is to avoid large outside investments, growth will also be directly related to how quickly automobiles can be received, repaired, and delivered to a qualifying customer. Inventory flow time reduction is critical to reducing capital costs. This is outlined in academic theory, such as Little’s Law which states that the average number of cars being repaired will be dependent on the average time to repair and the arrival times between orders (demand). I plan to run the internal aspects of the business as an engineering project whenever possible because this is what I’m most comfortable with as the senior leader. A car at the garage will be costing me money, instead of being in the driveways of people that need them. This will be the primary justification behind development decisions as the business grows.

This realization helped me define another critical member of my management team will need to be an expert in repairing compact cars with particular familiarity in finding fast, inexpensive repair solutions. This person will mostly be required in developing a ‘streamlined repair’ and ‘standard fixes’ process, a sort of list that offers volunteer mechanics a carefully outlined, but general process for completing a project. It will also outline the optimal fixes for common issues afflicting the secondary market cars we’re targeting. The expert mechanic and expert auto appraiser will also be required to develop a process for finding the most economical cars to purchase. If purchasing evolves into the dominant acquisition strategy, the process will need to carefully balance finding cars that have been totaled due to high repair costs, while still being economically feasible to repair. In this case, the repairs needed to make the car roadworthy will most likely be labor intensive tasks where the primary cost driver would be the hourly charges of a professional shop.

Although the aforementioned assessments about the cost to repair and the basic process of restoring a car would be comfortable for me to manage on my own, it probably wouldn’t be feasible at any significant scale. I could process one car at a time, but if there is as large of a market as I suspect for Driving for a Better Future, there will be enough demand to support much higher output volumes. In this case, the last two weeks of course materials stress how important it will be to get expert input on the repair and acquisition processes. We also discussed the importance of a knowledgeable team with just one lead decision maker. I plan to fill the latter role. Even if it needs to be treated as a temporary out of pocket expense, hiring the right resources (such as was summarized by Samaritan Inn hiring a 28 day rehab program expert) will dramatically improve the growth of my business. It will result in a higher quality and lower cost, alongside the ability to deliver more vehicles to the customers that need them.