EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

You are a Business Analyst at Simcoe Skies, a regional airline with operations across Eastern Canada (note: this is a fictitious company). Simcoe Skies has received numerous complaints from customers about how their baggage is handled, with bags often mis-routed or lost. Simcoe Skies is planning to expand operations, and is scheduled to open a series of new routes within the next year. Senior management would like to address their customers' complaints, and develop a plan to improve their baggage handling systems in time for their expansion. You have been asked to research Olympia Airlines (note: this is a fictitious company, but is modelled off a real company), and to examine the process Olympia uses to handle customers' baggage. Senior management would like to see a process flowchart, along with a written report addressing a few topics.

CASE STUDY: SIMCOE SKIES

Background: Simcoe Skies is a regional airline with operations across Eastern Canada. Simcoe Skies wants to improve its baggage handling system, and senior management has asked you to research another regional airline known to have efficient and effective operations in place: Olympia Airlines. Olympia Airlines is unique among U.S. air carriers not only for its extensive flight coverage of remote towns throughout the U.S. Northwest (it also covers Hawaii, Alaska, and Mexico from its primary hub in Seattle), but it is also one of the smallest independent airlines, with 10,300 employees, including 3,000 flight attendants and 1,500 pilots. What makes Olympia Airlines really unique, though, is its ability to build state-of-the-art processes, using the latest technology, that yield high customer satisfaction. Indeed, J.D. Power and Associates has ranked Olympia Airlines highest in North America for seven years in a row for customer satisfaction. Olympia Airlines was the first to sell tickets via the internet, first to offer web check-in and print boarding passes online, and first with kiosk check-in. Olympia's Director of System Operation Control states, "We are passionate about our processes. If it's not measured, it's not managed." One of the processes Olympia is most proud of is its baggage handling system. Passengers can check in at kiosks, tag their own bags with barcode stickers, and deliver them to a customer service agent at the carousel, which carries the bags through the vast underground system that eventually delivers the bags to a baggage handler. Enroute, each bag passes through TSA (Transportation Security Administration) automated screening, and is manually opened or inspected if it appears suspicious. With the help of barcode readers, conveyer belts automatically sort and transfer bags to their location (called a "pier") at the tarmac level. A baggage handler then loads the bags onto a cart and takes it to the plane for loading by the ramp team waiting inside the cargo hold. There are different procedures for "hot bags" (bags that have less than 30 minutes between transfer) and for "cold bags" (bags with over 60 minutes between plane transfers). Hot bags are delivered directly from one plane to another (called "tail-to-tail"). Cold bags are sent back into the normal conveyer system. The process continues on the destination side with Olympia's unique guarantee that customer luggage will be delivered to the terminal's carousel within 20 minutes of the plane's arrival at the gate. If not, Olympia grants each passenger a 2,000 frequent-flier mile bonus! The airline's use of technology includes barcode scanners to check-in the bag when a passenger arrives, and again before it is placed on the cart to the plane. Similarly, on arrival, the time the passenger door opens is electronically noted and bags are again scanned as they are placed on the baggage carousel at the destination; tracking this metric means that the "time to carousel" (TTC) deadline is seldom missed. And the process almost guarantees that the lost bag rate approaches zero. On a recent day, only one out of 100 flights missed the TTC mark. The baggage process relies not just on technology, though. There are detailed, documented procedures to ensure that bags hit the 20-minute timeframe. Within one minute of the plane door opening at the gate, baggage handlers must begin the unloading process. The first bag must be out of the plane within three minutes of parking the plane. This means the ground crew must be in the proper locationwith their trucks and ramps in place and ready to go. Largely because of technology, flying on Olympia Airlines is remarkably reliable - even in the dead of winter with only a few hours of daylight, 50 mph winds, slippery runways, and low visibility. Olympia Airlines has had the industry's best on-time performance, with 87% of its flights landing on time.

1. Include a process flowchart of the process a passenger's bag follows from check-in to destination carousel at Olympia Airlines:

Consider all possible variations in the bag's routing.

Consider sub-dividing the process into sections for (i) loading onto a plane, and (ii) offloading from a plane.

Include the exception process for the TSA opening of selected bags.

2. a brief written report providing responses to the following topics:

What metrics (specific and measurable) are needed to track baggage?

What is the role of scanners in the baggage process?

How does the kiosk alter the check-in process?

What are advantages and disadvantages of using kiosks?