The use of operations research/quantitative analysis techniques as a decision making tool at the city of Cape Town’s water and sanitation department

Abstract

This research seeks to investigate the relationship between the use of Operational Research (OR) tools or techniques or the lack thereof, and the possible impact on decision-making amongst management of the City of Cape Town’s (CoCT) Water and Sanitation Department (WSD) and its impact on service delivery. The CoCT is the municipality, which governs the city of Cape Town, its suburbs and exurbs, and falls under the South African local government sphere. The Department is responsible for ensuring water quality. WSD extracts and analyses water samples to identify bacteria or chemicals that may be present, whilst taking action to resolve problems when necessary. For actions to be taken to resolve problems, decisions are taken, and these decisions determine how problems are resolved to deliver quality services to the public on time and in a cost effective manner. OR is a scientific approach to managerial decision making which eliminates guesswork and emotions from decision making. OR is also described as a discipline that focuses on application of information technology for informed decision-making. The research question this study set out to answer is to what extent do managers at the CoCT’ s WSD use OR. It also seeks to discover the relationship between OR and decision-making, whether any relationship between decision-making at the WSD and service delivery exists, and whether there is any link between politics and decision making in the organisation. This research investigated the efficiency of current decision-making tools that are utilized at the WSD. A questionnaire was developed and used as a tool to acquire inputs to satisfy the research question. The analysed data lead to recommendations for the WSD to support and improve on its existing decision-making tools. This study is based on material that was collected from a wide range of journals, extending from regular OR literature to many application journals, articles and published books.