After several years of driving long-haul trucks, Joe Blanka
founded his own trucking company, Blanka Transport Inc.
(BTI), which specialized in less-than-truckload shipments in the
midwestern part of the United States. Joe developed a successful
method for scheduling BTI’s runs that met or exceeded the
delivery expectations of its customers. As a result, BTI shipments were growing at a rate between 15 and 20 percent per
year. The growth, however, was not evenly distributed across
BTI’s territory. On some routes, capacity was overloaded in one
direction and underloaded in the other.
Joe noticed that the imbalance problem was not stable
across time. In some months, capacity was short in one direction, and in other months, it was short in another direction. He
thought that one way of solving the problem would be through
marketing, by offering incentives to customers whose shipments
would improve load balance. Another approach to the problem
was to analyze and restructure the route–equipment combinations. He also thought that it might be possible to warehouse
some less-urgent shipments for short periods in order to help
the balance.
Joe’s son, the first member of the Blanka family to attend
college, was a senior in engineering school. He had just completed a course in project management, and after briefly describing some of the basic concepts to his father, he suggested that a
process improvement project might be a good way to deal with
the balance problem. He thought that the Marketing Manager
and the Route Manager could serve as project co-managers. He
also felt that some of the older, more experienced drivers might
be helpful. The objective of the project would be to decrease the
size of the route imbalances by 75 percent in 1 year.

Questions: Is this a proper approach to the problem? Is this a “project”; if
so, what are the three triple constraints? What, if any, helpful
suggestions would you make to Joe?