Common challenges in airport multi-resource planning

Transcription

1 Management briefing Common challenges in airport multi-resource planning Discover the one solution that every airport operator needs to boost operational excellence AIRPORT RESOURCE PLANNING

2 The weakest link creates the strongest impression on passengers So what do travelers remember most about your airport? Is it the 20 things that go smoothly or the one thing that goes wrong? To keep passengers happy while coping with rising air travel demand your airport needs to operate at the highest level of efficiency at all times. This means ensuring optimal use of all your resources; employees, vehicles, equipment and fixed assets such as counters, gates and stands. However, multi-resource planning is a highly complex process. It takes more than just fuel and a pilot to get a plane on and off the ground. Crew, passengers, luggage and food coming from different parts of the airport have to get to the plane at the right time. To facilitate this, your planners need to allocate suitable stands, gates and vehicles. And they have to be sure that the security, check-in and other required staff with the right skills and necessary permissions are also at the right place and time. Your planning team faces immense pressure to get everything right. Are they equipped with sufficient support to make accurate resource planning decisions? Read on to find out. 2 AIRPORT RESOURCE PLANNING & OPTIMIZATION

3 Key considerations Does your current planning system allow you to: 1. Have a complete overview of your resources and plan accurately based on the collective information? 2. Align the planning of all resources to business KPIs? 3. Quickly revise and re-optimize your schedule when circumstances change? 4. Take into account maintenance schedules and peak periods and ensure you have an optimal amount of available resources? 5. Foresee and be prepared for the impact of future changes in demand, flight numbers or regulations? A no to any of these questions indicates that your current planning solution is not doing enough for you. Three or more negative answers suggest that your system might be holding you back. Read on to see if your airport is plagued by some of the most common planning challenges, and learn the key to overcoming these hurdles. AIRPORT RESOURCE PLANNING & OPTIMIZATION 3

4 Top barriers to efficient planning 1. Silo thinking Airport operations are characterized by complex interdependencies check in, security, gate allocation, ground handlers. Which is why integration of planning across the multiple departments at your airport is important. But many airports still rely on piles of spreadsheets instead of integrated plans. Each planner sits in their own planning silo and focuses on the plan for their own resources. As a result, each department is driving their own objectives rather than overall airport goals. That can make planning slow and inefficient, and the final result far from optimal for the airport as a whole. Let s take a look at a real life example: A department takes two weeks to make a plan. They then give it to the next department which makes modifications, then pass it to a third department who make more amendments, and so on and so forth. A process which is inefficient at the best of times is a catastrophe when last minute changes are required. Without integrated planning, departments make completely separate plans without cross-referencing. This lack of alignment severely cripples operational efficiency, leading to both unhappy passengers and employees. An integrated planning system solves all these problems. Shared data enables planners to make changes in one place, and the system would update information across the board. Operations are smoother, response to delays quicker and passengers happier. 4 AIRPORT RESOURCE PLANNING & OPTIMIZATION

5 2. Lack of visibility Do you have all the information you need to make accurate plans? Can you react to changes in the present and prepare for the future? Limited visibility means limited control. When you don t know exactly where your people, equipment and vehicles are, you can t see what effect a change in plans will have across the whole airport. Any errors in data input become almost impossible to spot, but can have a huge impact. To make informed decisions quickly and respond swiftly to changes, you need a full view of your resource usage. Only then can you significantly improve operational excellence. For instance, finding the most suitable replacement for the tow-truck that has just broken down. And seeing the impact of a gate change on the rest of the day s flights, staff and equipment, as well as on your KPIs such as costs and delays. AIRPORT RESOURCE PLANNING & OPTIMIZATION 5

6 3. Excessive buffering Buffers give you sufficient time to respond to disturbances and changes. But are your planners taking it too far? Are generous buffers incurring unnecessary costs by paying too many people to be on standby, just because your planners don t have the correct insights? Have you invested in far too much equipment, just so you can have back-ups for emergencies? Buffers that result in inefficiency and additional costs, typically point to sub-optimal plans. Without optimization, you over-rely on buffers just to keep to the initial plan for balancing staffing and managing capacity. These buffers make it difficult for you to keep to budgets, deploy resources efficiently and fulfill service level agreements. Nor can you produce plans that drive your KPIs. Transform your sub-optimal plans into profitable ones with KPI-based planning. Adopt technology that shows you the outcome of various possible scenarios before you make a decision. This ensures that you arrive at the optimal plan each time, with maximized use of all your resources at all levels strategic, tactical and day-ofoperations. 6 AIRPORT RESOURCE PLANNING & OPTIMIZATION

7 A 100%-fit planning solution for all your resources Your plans have to fully fit your business requirements. Quintiq provides a 100%-fit solution that gives you full visibility and allows you to create optimal plans that reflect every element of your reality. Quintiq helps you overcome the many complexities and unavoidable disruptions, and make sure that every resource is contributing to the success of your airport. Quintiq enables you to generate more efficient and agile plans for your multiple resources with top of the line: Integration Every plan for every resource across the airport is linked. Instead of having various departments plan in silos, they work together to make accurate and aligned plans. This means you can react quickly to problems without causing complications in other areas. You re able to make changes using a platform that automatically updates every plan and schedules your resources efficiently. Visibility You have a complete overview of capacity of all current and future resources across the airport, and can see how planning them in different ways affects your KPIs. You gain immediate insight into how any change in plans impacts other schedules and operations. Optimization You can balance staffing and manage assets to achieve optimal results. You use what-if scenarios to evaluate plans, save on your operating expenses by reducing buffers, and make best use of all the resources available. AIRPORT RESOURCE PLANNING & OPTIMIZATION 7

8 Empower your planners to make accurate decisions on resource allocation, while keeping all interdependencies intact. Examples include: Adding passenger services staff Reassigning aircraft to gates Rerouting baggage to different belts Accommodating changes in security demand For more information on achieving greater success for your airport through efficient multi-resource planning, contact us or visit Copyright 2015 Quintiq. All rights reserved. Offices: Web: AIRPORT RESOURCE PLANNING & OPTIMIZATION 8