Assignment Case Study: Birmingham International Airport
Birmingham International Airport, or simply Birmingham Airport, serves international and domestic flights in and out the city of Birmingham and the entire West Midlands of the United Kingdom (Birmingham Airport, 2014). While the Birmingham International Airport only has 700 employees, the BIA coordinates and oversees 7,000 staff members of more than 15 organizations based in the airport. Due to the complexity and demand of higher standard of quality in the airport, operations management plays a vital role in keeping the BIA working and operating efficiently and effectively even in the midst of pressure from changing environment and situations of the airport.
Birmingham International Airport, or simply Birmingham Airport, serves international and domestic flights in and out the city of Birmingham and the entire West Midlands of the United Kingdom (Birmingham Airport, 2014). While the Birmingham International Airport only has 700 employees, the BIA coordinates and oversees 7,000 staff members of more than 15 organizations based in the airport. Due to the complexity and demand of higher standard of quality in the airport, operations management plays a vital role in keeping the BIA working and operating efficiently and effectively even in the midst of pressure from changing environment and situations of the airport.
According to MIT Sloan School of Management (2014), operations management is focused on "the design and management of products, processes, services and supply chains" with the goal of delivering services to its customers. In this regard, operations management is, mainly, developed to help airports run smoothly even with the presence of various organizations and the influx of customers. Primarily, the task of the airport is to ensure than planes safely land and take off from the airport. To accomplish this, operations management is responsible in the scheduling and control of flights coming in and going out the airport. This include controlling the runway, the ground holding, and the optimization of en-route operations (Jacquillat & Sakhrani, 2014).
Moreover, operations management also help the airport to ensure quality control through monitoring and inspection. Due to the fact that BIA is made of more than 150 organizations, it is important to keep quality and control of these organizations to ensure that top service provided to customers. According to Richard Heard, the Operations Director of BIA, it is about "coordination and setting the safety and customer service standards for everyone to adhere to."
To achieve quality, MIT Sloan School of Management (2014) noted that operations management is also responsible in traffic and materials handling as well as equipment maintenance. This is very important because BIA is focused on providing service that matters life. According to Jacquillat & Sakhrani (2014), safety is the foremost responsibility of civil aviation authorities. The airport must keep its technologies and equipment ready to respond to any situation such as keeping the medical emergency unit as part of risk management contingency. In doing so, BIA is sure to provide quality services with the basic regard to what customers and clients need and how these can be provided for even during problems, which according to Heard usually happens because there are two similar days in airport management.
The role of BIA's operations director could be summed in terms of: safety, efficiency, reliability, flexibility, scalability, adaptability, and sustainability (Jacquillat & Sakhrani, 2014). These are major requirements and tasks that the operations director needs to attend as parameters in evaluating the quality of the operation. At the top of the operations director's task is to make sure that all staff members working within the airport and all organizations are well coordinated. Due to the fact that the airport works as a linear system, the failure of those who are in the ticketing will surely affect the scheduling of flights, thus creating a bottleneck that hinders the quality of service the airport provides.
To achieve the coordination within the operations of the airport, Heard noted the need of a trusted and well-structured systemic procedure or process. The development of the system in the linear provision of services will ensure the coordination needed for the airport to avoid its bottlenecks. Leadership is a requirement in making sure that all stakeholders and members of the system work well. In fact, even in a well-structured process, there are emergencies that always occur. When this happens, the operations director must also provide a procedure on how responses are made or extended. In essence, operations directors should create a system that is ready to respond when risk situations happen and not just a system that works well in a smooth situation.
In fact, due to the risks associated with the process, operation plans must be made by the operations director. Through the plan, layout and structure, equipment selection, and questions on methods will be properly addressed. Plans help to knowledge and heads up on schedules and controls, the policies to be made and the quality metrics to be used. The plan details on what particular divisions of staff do to address customers' concerns when delays or diversions happen, how are they provided with what they need. All these things are laid out in the operation plan. Lastly, the operations director also serves as the human resource manager of the airport. Due to the fact that the operations director is only one, there have to be several authorities delegated to meet the demands of the job. The operations manager create a structure on delegations of tasks, authorities, and responsibilities.
In a a gist, Richard Heard, as the operations director, works with the procedure to ensure that day-to-day tasks are properly met and operations work well. Schedules are made, people are assigned and delegated. Of course, the basic requirement of the job is to have planes safe during land and take off, and ensure that customers' needs are provided for. The systemic process demands coordination of people within the organization. People are connected to each other and they function differently with the overall knowledge on how the system work to address or mitigate problems when they occur.
And of course, the operations director also needs to deal with long-term issues. Heard must address concerns on how BIA address the growing demand of traffic in terms of scheduling and the capacity of the airport. The goal is to use all facilities to their maximum level, then when it is done find a way to grow the airport to meet the operations. These are concerns that must be considered by the operations director because the task is not just to oversee the operations of the airport but to provide an insight on how operations will work when customers double or when flights increase by 20%. In a away, operations management is about keeping operations working as growth and progress increase.
References
Birmingham Airport. (2014). About us. Retrieved from http://www.birminghamairport.co.uk/meta/about-us.aspx
Jacquillat, A. & Sakhrani, V. (2014). A Joint Planning, Management and Operations Framework for Airport Infrastructure. 4th International Engineering Systems Symposium � CESUN 2014.
MIT Sloan School of Management. (2014). What is Operations Management? Retrieved from http://mitsloan.mit.edu/omg/om-definition.php
