Operations management and customer service in a political environment are crucial skills for public and non-profit managers. The Snow Removal case is a classic in public administration for teaching ways to analyze operational circumstances. To many students and instructors, analyzing capacity and demand often seem daunting. But this case, and a companion case on service delivery systems Case Processing of Welfare Assignment Collections allows plain language, low-math skills approaches, which take into account important dimensions of politics and resources. In a compelling presentation of how to deal with the seeming unpredictability of a snowstorm (which could shed light on how to prepare for other seemingly unpredictable circumstances), the case provides a backdrop for teaching students:

1. To develop demand projections for geographically dispersed and highly seasonal municipal services
2. To estimate service capacity in a man-machine system given a series of constraints on productivity and resource availability
3. To outline ways efficient resource allocation can increase the capacity of a public service delivery system
4. To explore the political dimensions of performance failures in a basic municipal service

The case is used in warm weather and cold weather areas of the country with nearly equal success.

Professor Stephen Rosenthal of Boston University School of Management, one of the originators of using operations management concepts for assessing and improving public services, wrote this case. The case first appeared in Managing Government Operations Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman and Co., 1982, and the concepts were later discussed in "Producing Results in Government Programs: Moving Beyond Project Management and its Limited View of Success" Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 8 (1) (Winter 1989)