Question

OPERATIONS ASSIGNMENT

As flying becomes a commodity and as airlines strive to offer the lowest fares possible, Southwest is finding it increasingly hard to distinguish itself from its competition. A proposal has been made to offer a business class on its longer flights. This class would have more comfortable seats, more legroom, and complimentary magazines, movies, meals, drinks, and Wi-Fi. A toilet would be dedicated to this section. These passengers would also get priority boarding and de-boarding of flights. If the experiment is successful Southwest would consider rolling out business class on all its flights.

1) What does the operations function have to do to examine the feasiblity of this proposal and get ready for its implementation? Answer using the framework of the 10 key operations decisions.

2) What role do the other functions (specifically, Finance, Marketing, and HR) have to play in examining the feasibility of this idea and successfully implementing it?

Answer 1

1)

The 10 key decisions areas from an operations perspective in this case are:-

Design Goods and services – From this perspective, it would be challenging for southwest airlines as it would have to design new seats and incorporate facilities such as wifi requiring additional expenses and know how.Also, the processes would need to be modified to accommodate additional services like priority check-in and boarding.

Quality Management – It would be important to provide high-quality services to the business class as compared to the previous class which would require training and better products.

Process and Capacity Design would need to be changed to incorporate the new class.

Location Strategy – The company would have to decide on which routes it would be best to provide the business class for maximum profit

Layout Design would need to be developed to accommodate the new kind of business class seats in the same aircraft.

HR planning and job design would be necessary to handle the customers.

Supply chain planning to get the additional services like onboard food and drinks in the right condition.

Inventory management techniques to find out the optimal number of seats to be sold and at what price.

Maintenance and scheduling would change as more services would now have to be handled

2)

?The roles of the other functions would be as follows:-

The HR department would have to ensure that the employees are properly trained so that the new class of passengers are treated in the best possible manner.

Operations would have to handle the various aspects of the supply chain.

The marketing department would have to communicate the new class and how it is better as compared to other players in the market and what benefit the customer would get by using Southwest.

The finance department would have to corroborate the additional cost outlay and match it with the revenue expected from the new addition. It would have to assess the long-term profitability of the new service.