Scheduling study solves ‘stumbling block’ for UB Police

A research project conducted by engineering graduate students has given the UB Police Department a more efficient and fair scheduling system, winning raves from police administrators and officers alike.

The study, conducted under the quality methodology program known as Six Sigma, has solved what police administrators say is a long-standing problem of ensuring the department has adequate coverage while providing more officers a desirable schedule, according to UB Deputy Police Chief Joshua B. Sticht, who oversaw the project for the department.

“The students really did a lot of research, looking at calls for service to determine what times of day and days of the week were busiest,” Sticht says. “They looked at the number of officers available and changed the way those officers were allocated on our three primary shifts.

“That change in itself allowed us to have more officers have weekends or parts of the weekend off.”

A major component of the schedule change was the creation of a “fourth shift” that covers the overlap between the afternoon and midnight shifts, Sticht explains. This fourth shift won uniform approval from the police officers, as well as supervisors.

“So they were actually able to increase coverage at the times we needed it and give officers more scheduling options they wanted without having to add more people,” he says.

The semester-long study was done in fall 2014, and supervised by Harrison Kelly, a research assistant professor in the Department Industrial and Systems Engineering, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Students who took part in the study are Dhruvay Jain, Omar A. Siddiqui, Piyush Nain, Amit Nanal, Aniket Khalekar and Abhishek Sarma.

The Six Sigma methodology used in the project was pioneered by Motorola and General Electric to eliminate defects and errors in manufacturing and service organizations. It is one of the most popular quality programs being followed in the corporate workplace today.

The UB Police scheduling issue “has been something management and the union has been working on for at least 15 years, trying to come up with something that worked for both sides,” Sticht says.

“We’ve probably looked at six really serious possibilities with alternate schedules before and we couldn’t get any agreement,” he says. “This was different.

“If we had an outside company come in, it would have cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he adds.

UB Police Chief Gerald Schoenle calls the scheduling project a perfect example of how departments at UB can benefit by working together.

“The University Police actively looks for ways to collaborate with other departments on campus,” Schoenle says. “And this is the fourth project in the last few years we have worked together on with our campus partners. We are really excited that we were able to implement this project, which benefits everyone.”