By John Halikowski / ADOT Director

Times -- they are changing at the Arizona Department of Transportation Motor Vehicle Division. Literally! The wait times at our Phoenix and Tucson MVD offices have been cut in half compared to last year. We have expanded the office hours at our MVD urban offices in Phoenix and Tucson, opening the doors at 7:30 a.m. to help meet customer needs. These efforts are resulting in great success.

I commend our employees at MVD who have embraced the Arizona Management System philosophy of finding change for the better. Instead of customers having to sit and wait to be served, a very arduous process a year ago, today we have employees providing assistance and answering questions upon arrival that reduce the amount of time a customer spends at an MVD office. Since February, customers at the 15 MVD offices in metro Phoenix and Tucson are now averaging fewer than 30 minutes from the moment they enter an office to the time they leave. Our rural MVD offices are also experiencing a reduction in wait times.

We have also introduced kiosks in MVD offices and offer more services online, reducing the amount of time customers need to spend at an MVD office. It follows our vision to get people out of line and safely on the road.

There are now 168 third party providers in locations statewide. Most third party providers offer similar services at an MVD office like drivers and motorcycle licenses, travel identification cards, and title and registrations. For a list of third party providers, visit the ADOT website, azdot.gov/mvd.

By opening our urban MVD offices a half an hour early, the results are showing better customer service. Our employees can have flexible schedules to meet the high demand times, the early morning and lunch time hours. We are saving on overtime costs as employees have time to complete their tasks during the day.

I am happy that our customer service representatives will have time now to continue their training. Beginning July 12, the urban MVD offices will open at noon to allow time for employee continuing education programs. This time change will occur on the second Wednesday of each month.

Times – they are changing at MVD – for better customer service and less wait time. Stay tuned, more innovations are on the way.

This post originally appeared on ADOT Director John Halikowski's 
LinkedIn page. He has led the agency since 2009.

By Peter Corbett / ADOT Communications

Earlier this week, we shared how a bright idea by ADOT employees is allowing us to upgrade rather than replace 20-year-old overhead electronic message boards.

This innovative approach provides more readable message boards and saves taxpayer dollars. While replacing a board would cost $300,000, a retrofit using the kit employees developed costs just $42,000. And it saves about $1,000 a year in energy costs for each message board.

In ADOT's culture of continuous improvement, we call this a kaizen (pronounced ky-ZEN). That means something that improves safety, improves efficiency by reducing waste or, as is the case here, accomplishes both.

The video above shows this kaizen in action. Please take a look.

By Doug Nick / ADOT Communications

You know how football fans love to tailgate hours or even days before a big game?

That’s kind of what lining up at an Arizona Department of Transportation Motor Vehicle Division office used to be like in the early morning.

The only thing missing, was, well… fun.

We get that, so we made some changes.

A MVD Building

A few months ago in Tucson we started opening up MVD offices at 7:30 instead of 8 a.m. That allows us to be more flexible in how we schedule our employees. Some come in a bit earlier than others, and that means we can spread things out more evenly throughout the day.

This has worked so well in Tucson, we’re now doing it in the Phoenix area too – 15 offices in all. We wrote about it on 6/20/2017.

We’re moving customers through our locations more efficiently. That’s a big deal during peak times like early in the morning, the lunch hour and later in the day. Flexing schedules means fewer gaps when employees are at lunch or on a break and we can have more service windows open.

It also allows our staff people to catch up on many of the paperwork tasks that build up during the day. Taking care of those on an ongoing basis means there’s a lot less to go through at closing time, and we’ve reduced overtime costs significantly. That’s a huge savings to you, the taxpayer.

And because we’re making so many service improvements, we’re going to the next level in continually training our employees. To do that, our offices in Phoenix and Tucson will open at noon on the second Wednesday of every month, starting July 12th.

The expanded office hours combined with the modified schedule on the second Wednesday of each month provide an overall increase of six hours a month during which customers may receive services at an urban MVD office.

Of course we’d love to see you, but you may not need to visit at all. Remember, more than half of the things you need to do with MVD can be done online at ServiceArizona.com.

MVD: Getting you out of line and safely on the road.

By Doug Nick / ADOT Communications

Numbers are useful and may tell a story, but they can only do so much.

At the end of a ballgame, the numbers will tell you who won. But they can’t convey the thrill of seeing a last-minute touchdown drive, a grand-slam home run, a buzzer-beater to win the championship.

At the Motor Vehicle Division, numbers tell us a lot of things. One of the most important things is how busy our offices are.

We want to get you out of line and safely on the road, so we like it when those numbers go down just like they have been for a while.

In the last half of 2016, MVD office wait times in metro Phoenix and Tucson decreased an average of 20 minutes. But the numbers don’t tell the whole story. To get that, we need you.

MVD hears from people all the time. And one of the best things we hear is that going to the MVD today is a lot quicker and easier than it was not so long ago.

So what have we been doing?

You may have heard of the Arizona Management System, and it’s a big reason why things keep getting better. Governor Doug Ducey has championed this idea, which empowers every one of our employees to come up with improvements. It could be something as small as moving a copy machine, to opening MVD offices half an hour early in Tucson.

That Tucson idea? We’ve actually done that. It’s meant people get in earlier, our employees can be scheduled more evenly throughout the day, wait times are way down and overtime costs have been cut more than 80 percent.

Not bad at all.

We also do things like use people (yes, actual people!) to help customers instead of relying on a computer voice to tell people when to come to a service window.

That means when you visit one of our offices, we can help make sure you have your paperwork ready to go so when you get to the service window your transaction goes smoother and you – not to mention your fellow customers – get out faster. We’ve also increased our capacity for scheduling road test appointments online (we’re pretty sure the internet is here to stay) and more ideas are being looked at all the time.

We love that the average wait time at our busiest Phoenix and Tucson area offices is down 20 minutes, but the search for quality isn’t so much about better numbers, but better service – for you.

By John Halikowski / ADOT Director

Have you ever heard the expression “time is money”? The Arizona Department of Transportation Motor Vehicle Division has taken that expression to heart and implemented strategies that have resulted in an 80 percent reduction in employee overtime pay. By modifying the operating hours of three Tucson-area offices, MVD has seen major savings in payroll costs.

ADOT and all its divisions like MVD are implementing the Arizona Management System to empower employees to find ways to improve the customer experience.

By opening the three Tucson MVD offices a half hour early, customers who want to get their business done early can do so and supervisors have more flexibility in scheduling employees. The number of employees available to serve customers is more consistent throughout the day and transactions are conducted more efficiently. There are fewer employees having to stay after hours to finish various tasks, thus reducing overtime costs. It’s a win-win situation for customers and our employees (who get to go home on time, as scheduled), not to mention the savings we are incurring for the Arizona taxpayer.

I enjoy sharing these stories that highlight the efforts our employees are making as change agents. No change is too small that makes a difference in how we operate and serve our customers, the taxpayers. Less time you have to spend at a MVD office means time savings to you and ADOT – even if it is a half hour at a time.

This post originally appeared on ADOT Director John Halikowski's
LinkedIn page. He has led the agency since 2009.

By Doug Nick / ADOT Communications

Thirty minutes isn’t much.

It takes that much time to wash the laundry, change the oil in your car or watch a sitcom.

No, it’s not much time at all.

But as we told you this week, by opening our Tucson offices 30 minutes earlier, at 7:30 a.m., we’ve decreased wait times at those offices, and we’re saving Arizona taxpayers some money.

Because we open earlier, the number of employees available to serve customers is more consistent throughout the day and customer service is more efficient. As a result, MVD staff get things done sooner, can get home to their families, and overtime hours have plummeted 80 percent since the change was begun last year. It also means customers get in and out faster and have more time to do the things they want to do.

Did I say 80 percent? That’s a lot. And it all started because of a little thing like adding 30 minutes to our business day.

Saving you money is great. Getting you out of line and safely on the road is pretty good, too. MVD is doing both.