Practical Implementation of Total Productivity Model in Bus System

Abstract

Traditionally, transit managers have relied on partial productivity measures such as vehicle miles per operator or vehicle revenue miles per operator. Unfortunately, such measures are suboptimal because they overemphasize direct labor input without considering the enormous savings potential in better utilizing other input resources such as materials, equipment, energy, and so forth. This paper presents a total productivity perspective for transit managers, by providing them with a well‐proven measurement model—the Total Productivity Model (TPM), which takes into consideration a total productivity measure, along with five partial productivity measures. This model considers all the tangible outputs and inputs in a bus system. This model relates profitability to total productivity, making the model very powerful in both strategic and tactical planning. A step‐by‐step procedure is outlined for implementation of the TPM in a bus system. Also, a reallife example is presented for clarifying the procedure steps. This methodology is a practical tool that transit managers can effectively use both on maintenance as well as the operations side. The TPM also has the capability to do “what‐if” analyses, before major decisions are made in resource planning.