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Abstract: As the agency responsible for licensing and certifying motor vehicles and their operators, the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles serves over five million people a year -- 3.5 million on a person-to-person basis -- bringing the state in excess of $200 million in revenues from fees and sales taxes. This case presents an in-depth look at the operations of the Watertown office -- one of the busiest of the Registry's 37 branch offices -- focusing particularly on activities involving interaction with the public.
Learning Objective: This case was designed to serve as an introduction to a module or full course on operations management in the public sector. It complements two Harvard Business School cases -- McDonald's Corporation and Burger King Corporation (6-681-044 and 9-681-045, respectively) -- which normally precede it in the classroom. The case is entirely descriptive. That is, there are no explicit decisions that need to be made. The object of the class discussion is to improve students' powers of observation and their ability to conceptualize an operations management problem, and to get them to develop a better sense of the multiple dimensions of the "product" called registry services.