Wisner Rents Canoes: Company Analysis: Rend Time Slots

Wisner Rents Canoes is a small family owned company located on the Muskegon River in Newaygo, MI. The company rents out tubes, kayaks, canoes, rafts, and fishing boats. All rentals include transportation. Bringing your own equipment to be transported is also allowed. When I began at Wisner's, I noticed a series of issues that were causing severe lag times and customer dissatisfaction. In an attempt to increase efficiency, I decided to begin working on a standard operating procedure that would become our first employee manual. The following issues represent a portion of what was addressed in the manual:

Overwhelmed Time Slots. Our most popular times for transportation occured between 10:30 am and 12:30 pm. In the past, the reservation
This way, the flow was much steadier throughout the day rather than suddenly overwhelming. I also required that reservation confirmations calls inform people during busier time slots to attempt to arrive approximately half an hour before their departure time. This was to make sure that they were checked in with the office prior to their departure time and could be loaded promptly.

Trailer Shortages. I noticed that we were having a consistent issue keeping up with customer owned equipment transportation. Wisner's dropped all of our own reserved equipment at the boat launch ahead of time each morning so that we did not have to load equipment on trailers each trip. However, we were forced to consistently hold groups back if they brought their own equipment due partially to a lack of trailers. In order to fix this, I invested in two additional trailers. While this partially solved the issue, I noticed that we still had some lag. After some investigation, I noticed that groups with no customer owned equipment were being taken on buses with an empty trailer. I held a team meeting and required that all drivers drop empty trailers. This allowed for a much more efficient flow of traffic as we could pre-load trailers as customers arrived and quickly move them out. This drastically reduced the
We also had issues with not having enough life jackets and paddles arrive with customers at the launch. This was because drivers were required to load it for the customers. I realized that this caused a lag as drivers were on a strict drop and return system and occasionally forgot. This meant that another vehicle would have to be sent to the launch. The remedy to this was to take the responsibility partially out of the hands of the overwhelmed driver. Customers were required to collect their own gear from the equipment room. It was then the duty of the office to inform the customers at check in where to go and what to get. Signs were posted all over the building to remind the customers. Drivers would then do a final check with everyone aboard their bus to confirm that they had brought their gear. Extra gear was also dropped at the launch site in case of an emergency.

Bus Rotation. When I took over bus dispatch, I realized that it was difficult to keep track of so many vehicles going so many different directions at once without any electronic system. This caused serious confusion and lags. However, we didn’t have the means to afford such a system as a small family owned