Company Description
The chosen company is Southwest Airlines, which offers air travel at a low cost, allowing people to save money. The organization’s history began in 1967 when Herb Kelleher and Rollin King founded it (Wuet al., 2019). Later, the company started operating its first flights between Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. The focus on low prices, combined with short flight distances, became a unique feature of the airline that enabled it to manage costs effectively. Over time, this strategy allowed the organization to compete with large carriers and gain a foothold in the market.
Problem Description
One significant problem for the company is the problem of network management and further route planning. However, this is challenging to implement, as it requires a serious application of business analysis techniques to enhance customer satisfaction (Helmrich et al., 2023). The top management of the organization is the problem owner, as there have been frequent changes in its composition, especially following the resignation of the company’s founder (Helmrich et al., 2023).
Such regular changes in the course of action harmed the way Southwest developed and justified its strategy for future actions, as they destroyed employees’ unity. The stakeholders of the problem can be categorized, first and foremost, as employees who felt the impact of the change in leadership because the corporate ethics that the founder of Southwest had long supported were violated (Helmrich et al., 2023). Customers also feel strongly affected by the problem, as inefficient flights and their scheduling can cause people to stop using the company’s services.
Solving the Problem
The first step is planning, which, according to the schedule in Figure 1, will last six days. It will be necessary to form a working group. Additionally, this team should comprise key company management and analysts with in-depth knowledge of the current flight networks. The team will need to define goals and begin collecting information that may be useful in the future (Helmrich et al., 2023). It includes a map of consumer demands, market trends, and competitor strategies.
The second step involves analyzing the company’s current flights, enabling specialists to understand the problem. The third imperative is the design and development of alternative solutions. This stage will be decisive, as the team will begin to develop possible strategies for addressing the problem situation (Iiba, 2015). The team will need to develop several scenarios that could be decisive in correcting the current situation.
Implementation of the solution is the fourth stage, at which pilot testing of the selected results of the control group should occur (Iiba, 2015). This should include modeling design decisions across multiple markets to understand which options may be more appropriate. Commissioning is the final step that is fulfilled after selecting the best option from all the tested options. This point includes regular performance measurements and appropriate adjustments to enable the adaptation of new flight plans.
Maintenance tasks for this period will need to be carried out by an assembled team that will consult with the group responsible for the initial development of the plan. An auxiliary aspect will also have to be the training that employees must undergo (Helmrich et al., 2023). This aspect is mandatory, as all employees are required to know and navigate flight patterns to perform their duties effectively. Observation, evaluation, and training will take place in the final stage, which lasts nine days (Figure 1). During this period, employees will have the opportunity to improve their skills, and observation will demonstrate the effectiveness of the new route system implemented for Southwest.
References
Helmrich, A., Chester, M., & Ryerson, M. (2023). Complexity of increasing knowledge flows: the 2022 Southwest Airlines Scheduling Crisis. Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability, 3(3), 033001.
Iiba. (2015). A Guide to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK Guide) (3rd ed.). International Institute of Business Analysis.
Wu, W., Zhang, H., Zhang, S., & Witlox, F. (2019). Community detection in airline networks: An empirical analysis of American vs. Southwest Airlines. Journal of Advanced Transportation, 2019, 1-11.
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