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No, Scott, I think I'm the one who had confused things.  I was confusing seeing a signal or trend (or the beginnings of such) with actually adjusting the central line.  So you're right, we don't need to actually program a change in until there are 7 points above or below the central line, but we can look at what's going on.  Thanks for your continued dialog.  Took me a while to understand what I was actually saying.  Good luck with your measures!  –Cheryl

Scott, thanks so much for taking the time to post information on what your folks have done.  I like the way you have displayed the graph and the target zone.  As I said in my first post, our IT people did find a way to program the 7 points above or below the center line and recalculate the center line as needed.  But what about the short runs or 3 out of 4 points closer to the edge of the upper or lower range than to the center line?  Can your engineers incorporate that, as well?  It just seems like there are so many things to look for that it would be challenging to program something like that.  Although I suppose it would just be a series of OR statements – looking to see if any of the conditions were true.  

I appreciate what you have shared and do let me know if you ask them to delve any deeper or analyze the data based on other trends, too!  –Cheryl

Great description of the process, too. I love the commuting example (and plan to use that one myself when explaining it to others!).

 

Scott Anderson said:

Cheryl- Our computer engineers were able to get something for us that seems to work really well. Basically, they said the key is to take individual time points that are each in their own row, and combine them to put them all on a single row. Then, you can validate if 7 in that single row are above or below the mean, and if they are, automate a recalculation of the central line and the upper and lower limits. Below is how it looks. We've added the Target Zone as an ongoing target to hit, rather than putting the target out into the future (which we may add at some point where it makes sense).

Thanks, Scott.  I'd love to know about anything they come up with!  I'm still in the same spot with this that I was three months ago, so anything you/they find would be welcome!  –Cheryl

Of course I should have included the results!  For the first one it is:

 Field Customer Service processes are safe

Our Safety Coordinator and the crew members wanted a leading indicator, not just the Lost time from Injuries that we track already, so they came up with one related to training. 

 

The result related to the second measure is:

 Crew members are fully trained and know resources relevant to their work [i.e. we know what to do on our own or know how to get the information needed]

We do customer satisfaction surveys every two years, but that's not often enough for a performance measure.  But we do have customers send notes or call in frequently (average 5 or so a month throughout the District) talking about the good jobs our people are doing.  Those identified get a 'Pat on the Back', & are recognized at an all-employee meeting. So they wanted to track Pats on the Back.

A similar one from Engineering is:

 High level of internal and external customer service is maintained

We talked about either developing a periodic survey or giving comment cards to customers as they deal with the Engineers, but it's going to be hard to get a sample that is statistically significant because there is a small pool of people who interact with the Engineers each month and it would again involve people volunteering info. 

Any suggestions on these would be welcome!  Thank you.  –Cheryl

Yes, all good ideas (and this is a long term plan for the next 3 years ofr so!).  These are along the lines I have been working, but you added some great points.  Re: #6, Sometimes I am at a loss to come up with better measures. 

% of annual safety training completed – I'm not sure how to measure this any better since the trainings required differ for each employee and they do just need to be completed within the calendar year.  But it seems like it may be less than useful to have a measure that only makes sense on December 31.  It does send a signal as the year ends – if the crew is not getting close to 100%, there needs to be some trainings taken.  Any ideas on better ways to measure that one, or is that one of those things that is good to DO, but not necessarily a good PERFORMANCE MEASURE?

# of customers contacting us to tell us our service was good – This information is good to know, but it really depends on whether a customer decides to take the time to contact us or not.  There could be a lot of good work being done, and the customers are just too busy to write in.  Any thoughts on this one?

Thanks for your time, Stacey!  –Cheryl