Chapter 6 – The OM Blog by Heizer, Render, & Munson

Guest Post: Martin Guitars and Operations

Prof. Howard Weiss, retired from Temple U., illustrates his wide range of interests.

Martin is a guitar manufacturer that began operations in 1833. Martin specializes in acoustic guitars which account for about half as many guitars as electric guitars in the global guitar market. It is one of the most popular brands along with Fender, Gibson, Yamaha, Ibanez and Taylor.

Location: Martin began its operation in Manhattan. In 1839 Martin opened a plant in Nazareth PA, 90 miles due west of its NYC plant. In 1989 Martin opened a plant in Sonora, Mexico in order to make guitars that were more affordable. It is worth noting that two of Martin’s competitors, Fender and Taylor guitars also have plants in Mexico. These guitars are commonly referred to as MIM (Made in Mexico). See Ch.8.

Capacity: Martin has made over 3 million guitars since its inception, including one million since 2016. It currently produces a total of 500 guitars per day, 6 days per week, at the two plants. (See Supp. 7)

Forecasting: Clearly demand has been increasing. Martin’s forecasting needs to consider historical and causal analysis (see Ch. 4) since certain events can spike or drop the sales. For example, sales increased more than usual during the folk music craze and also when MTV was running its Unplugged series (featuring acoustic guitars). At first, COVID caused a decline in sales due to cancelled concerts and closed stores. But then there was an increase in demand, especially for beginner guitars since people were looking for activities while at home and could order guitars online.

Supply Chain: The supply chain (Ch. 11) begins in the forest and at the lumber facilities both in the U.S. and India.

Layout: Martin uses process layout–see Ch.7. Most of the work is done by hand but there are robots in the factory.

Safety: With all of the woodwork that is being performed the major safety concern is that of sawdust.

Quality Control: The incoming wood is inspected by humans because machines cannot pick up defects in the wood. Each guitar is checked for tone. The guitar gets put in a case, but then sits for 4 days and then undergoes rigorous testing to make certain the guitar parts, e.g. neck, bridge, tuning pegs, still work. (See Ch. 6).

Classroom Discussion Questions

How could Martin use the Quality Control techniques discussed in Ch. 6 of your text book?
What are some possible reasons Martin relocated from Manhattan to Nazareth, PA?

Teaching Tip: Why Quality Inspections Often Fail

We all know that students have trouble staying focused for a long lecture, even with the great job we all try to do. So try to find a short activity that will make a teaching point, break up the class for a few minutes, and get all the students enthused. Here is something you may want to try in Chapter 6, Managing Quality. It takes about 10 minutes.

In this chapter, we have suggested that building quality into a process and its people is difficult. In the old days, inspection was the main form of quality control. But inspection may not catch all the errors, and it may be expensive. To indicate just how difficult inspections can be, ask your students to turn to the OM in Action box on page 234, called “Inspecting the Boeing 787”.

Ask them to each count the number of E’s (both cap and lower case), including those in the title. This should be a pretty easy inspection job, I think, and I offer a crisp $10 bill to the first student to give me the correct count. That usually gets their attention!

As they each finish, I ask them to shout out their count and I do a tally on the board. There is amazing variation and I only have to shell out the reward in maybe one out of five classes. The answer, by the way, is in the Instructor’s Solutions Manual, as discussion question #18.

If you can share a class exercise of your own, we would be very happy to publish it as a Guest Post.

Guest Post: Quality Management in Services

Prof. Howard Weiss, retired from Temple U., shares his thoughts monthly.

A recent issue of The Philadelphia Inquirer presented two compelling examples of quality management—or, more accurately, lapses in quality management—within the service sector. These cases illustrate the difficulty of applying quality principles to both healthcare and transportation.

Virtua Hospital. Two newborn infants were mistakenly brought to the wrong mothers. Each mother breastfed the wrong child before the error was discovered. The nurse who identified and reported the mistake to her supervisors was subsequently terminated. Hospital administrators justified the dismissal by claiming the nurse had failed to check infant ID bands at the beginning of her shift. The nurse stated she had never been informed of such a policy.

Your Heizer/Render/Munson text notes in Chapter 6 there should be “Employee empowerment: When employees see a problem, they are trained to take care of it.” This nurse did take care of the problem. Reporting it should have led to continuous improvement in the ward rather than her being fired. The result of firing an employee who reports a problem will mean that fewer employees will report problems. This, of course, undermines quality improvement.

Philadelphia International Airport (PHL). PHL ranked last in customer satisfaction among the 27 Large airports that serve 10-33 million passengers per year–the 5th consecutive year it was at the bottom of the rankings.

Chapter 6 notes that “The personal component of services is more difficult to measure than the quality of the tangible component.” Nevertheless, J.D. Power evaluates airports on a range of specific, measurable factors including facilities, services, and customer experiences.

Management of PHL is fully aware of the airport’s shortcomings and has taken steps to improve by adding new bathrooms, new restaurants and a customer service training program. Plans are also underway to improve the rail platforms, seating, carpeting and roadway signage. However, these improvements will not fix the major problem. The airport is too small and too old and there is no room to expand it. One other factor to consider is that unlike with products, the passengers at PHL may not have other choices for which airport to use.

Classroom discussion questions
1. Does your employer encourage the reporting of problems/ mistakes?
2. Why might passengers at PHL not have other options? (Hint-check out American Airlines).

OM in the News: Ford Breaks Record—Of Safety Recalls

Ford has recorded more safety recalls in the first six months of 2025 than any car company ever has in an entire calendar year, reports The Wall Street Journal (July 12-13, 2025).

Ford just recalled 850,000 pickup trucks and SUVs because of a potential fuel-pump failure. A bad fuel pump could result in the engine stalling while a driver is operating the vehicle.

Last month, the firm said it would need to fix 200,000 all-electric Mustang Mach-E SUVs after receiving complaints from the government about customers being unable to open their doors as a result of the vehicle’s 12-volt battery dying, including cases where children were trapped inside. “There was no way for me to get inside my car without jumper cables,” a driver in Houston wrote in an April complaint. The person had to call emergency services and break into the car.

Also this year, Ford said it would need to fix nearly half a million 2016-2017 Explorer SUVs to prevent door trim from falling off. The issue was potentially creating a road hazard for other drivers.

In January of 2025, Ford paid $65 million to the government as part of a settlement over violations of auto-safety laws, specifically over a delayed recall of 600,000 vehicles with defective rearview cameras. As part of the agreement, the automaker said it would spend an additional $45 million to improve internal systems for tracking safety issues.

Ford and its CEO have staked out improving quality as a priority for the automaker. Improving quality will also help to reduce the billions of dollars Ford spends every year on warranty claims and safety recalls. The company hired a quality czar in 2022, and it has tied 70% of executive annual bonuses to quality. It said it has significantly improved product quality in recent years, with four new models winning accolades from a recent J.D. Power study on quality. The company has more than doubled its team of safety and technical experts and expanded testing on critical systems, such as vehicle powertrains, steering and braking.

Overall, recalls across the auto industry have been rising, with more than 1,000 recorded in 2024, compared with 800 a decade earlier.

Classroom discussion questions:

What quality tools in Chapter 6 of your Heizer/Render/Munson text could Ford employ to decrease defects?
Discuss Figure 17.1 in the context of Ford’s problems.

OM in the News: What are Boeing’s “Shadow Factories”?

Boeing is promising this year to get its jet production to precrisis levels and chip away at a growing backlog of orders. First, the manufacturer needs to clear out the dozens of planes in its shadow factories, reports The Wall Street Journal (Feb. 15-16, 2025). A shadow factory is what Boeing executives call a production line where engineers and mechanics work on fixing, maintaining or updating aircraft instead of building new ones. They exist for the company’s two-bestselling models, the 737 MAX and 787 Dreamliner.

As Boeing is struggling to hire and train enough machinists, the shadow factories can occupy some of the company’s most experienced workers. In some cases, Boeing spends more hours inspecting and reworking planes than it did to produce them in the first place. “It seems like 30% of everybody’s job is fixing something that’s bad quality or late product or something that shouldn’t have happened,” said the CEO.

It isn’t the first time Boeing has pledged to solve its shadow-factory problem. The company had initially vowed to be rid of it by the end of 2024, but clearing out the planes has proven vexing. The biggest chunk are MAXs parked at a facility in Moses Lake, Wash. They are mainly remnants of a global grounding of MAX jets following a pair of fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019. Boeing continued making the planes even though airlines weren’t taking them, and is still working to deliver them. Another couple of dozen are 787s sitting in Everett, Wash., awaiting checks to ensure parts of the planes are properly pieced together following quality questions raised years ago around the jet’s production process.

A year ago, Boeing estimated it had about 225 jets in the shadow factories. Not only do the planes take up space and tie up billions in much-needed revenue, they require sophisticated care and reworking, which means some of the company’s most skilled machinists are charged with fixing defective jets.

Any time a model requires an update or repair—a common occurrence in machinery as complicated as a jetliner—crews must do the relevant work on every unfinished plane. In 2023, for instance, the company had to repair around 160 737s in the shadow factory after misdrilled holes were found in the fuselage of a completed jet.

Classroom discussion questions:

Why is a shadow factory an unwise operations tool?
What has happened at Boeing in recent years to cause such quality problems?

OM in the News: Measuring the The Best and Worst Airlines

There’s been enough drama in the past year to impact U.S. airlines quality rankings. An Alaska Airlines blowout grounded dozens of planes. There was a failed JetBlue-Spirit merger and Spirit’s bankruptcy. A summer tech outage crippled Delta. Southwest Airlines faced investor pressure and said it’s switching to assigned seating. All while planes remained packed and air traffic congested.

Delta took the crown again in The Wall Street Journal’s 17th airline scorecard (Jan. 23, 2025), standing out in nearly every category. This is Delta’s 4th consecutive win and 7th in eight years. It prides itself on reliability and customer service—it displays this and other accolades on stickers near its cabin doors—and commands a premium for it. There’s a reason those Delta tickets often cost more. Southwest finished a mere point behind Delta, with Alaska in third. In the ratings cellar? Frontier. Spirit placed 8th and American Airlines finished 7th.

The 9 major U.S. airlines are ranked on 7 equally weighted operations metrics: on-time arrivals, flight cancellations, delays of 45 minutes or more, baggage handling, tarmac delays, involuntary bumping and what the Transportation Department calls passenger submissions (which are mostly complaints).

Delta finished first in on-time arrivals and was the only airline in the ranking to exceed 80%. It canceled far fewer flights than in 2023, giving it the lowest cancellation rate besides Southwest. “It’s a testament to our people, along with the resiliency, reliability and efficiency we’ve purposely built into our operation, that we canceled fewer than 1% of our scheduled flights and improved or held steady in nearly every category,” said Southwest’s COO.

Delta’s weak spot: bag handling. The airline’s mishandled bag rate trailed those of Allegiant, JetBlue, Frontier and Southwest. Frontier, the airline that draws you in with $19 tickets and piles on fees galore, finished at or near the bottom in all but two categories, dropping a spot in on-time arrivals and extreme delays from 2023. It did best in baggage handling, where it ranked third.

The overall scores fall off fairly dramatically after Delta and Southwest. Third-place finisher Alaska finished nine points below Delta, Allegiant 11.

Classroom discussion questions:

In Chapter 6 of your Heizer/Render/Munson OM text, we discuss TQM. Which of the many tools are used in the quality ranking metrics?
What would you do if you were Frontier’s operations manager?

Guest Post: Quality, Marketing and Cross Contamination

Professor Howard Weiss shares his thoughts about a variety of unusual OM topics with us monthly.

People with food allergies typically check the ingredients of a food product very carefully to ensure that the product does not contain an ingredient to which they are allergic. The top 8 allergens in food production are soy, wheat, milk, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, and shellfish.

Bimbo Bakeries, headquartered in Mexico with bakeries in 35 countries including the U.S., has taken a unique approach to listing allergens on some of its products. U.S. inspectors reported that Bimbo Bakeries USA — which includes brands such as Sara Lee, Oroweat, Thomas, Entenmanns and Ball Park buns and rolls —”listed ingredients such as sesame or tree nuts on labels even when they weren’t in the foods.” (Bimbo claims to be the largest bakery in this country).

The reason a company might purposely list ingredients that are not in its products is that it may be concerned about cross-contamination in a bakery plant and wants to ensure it will not be legally responsible in the event of cross contamination. In other words, rather than trying to introduce quality control procedures to prevent cross-contamination in its plant, the company is willing to be untruthful when listing ingredients to minimize the chance and or cost of a law suit.

It may be very expensive or difficult to prevent cross-contamination from one part of plant to another or from one machine to another. So to stay within the letter of the law some companies have deliberately added small amounts of allergens to products that previously did not contain these allergens. This helps the company avoid liability and legal costs.

Cross contamination can occur in several different ways:
 primary food production — from plants and animals on farms
 during harvest or slaughter
 secondary food production — including food processing and manufacturing
 transportation of food
 storage of food
 distribution of food — grocery stores, farmer’s markets, and more
 food preparation and serving — at home, restaurants, and other foodservice operations

There are strategies available to minimize the chance of cross-contamination. The best way is for food manufacturers to process products that contain allergens in a separate facility. If this is not possible then scheduling the production of products that contain allergens at a different time than other products may help. Cleaning procedures can be used to minimize the chance of cross contamination.

OM in the News: Tesla Recalls its Cybertrucks Over a Soap Issue

Tesla is recalling every Cybertruck built thus far to fix a defective pedal pad that could cause accelerator pedals to get stuck in the depressed position, raising the risk of a crash, reports USA Today (April 22, 2024). Specifically, when someone stomps on the accelerator, the pad can come off and get trapped in a bit of trim.

Cybertrucks are lined up at the Tesla Giga Factory in Texas this month

That would leave the accelerator stuck in the “on” position — something that has happened at least twice. When a driver hits the brake pedal, the truck will stop even if the accelerator is depressed. No injuries or crashes have been reported.

The problem, as Tesla reported to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, originated on production lines with soap. “An unapproved change introduced soap to aid in the component assembly,” the report says. Evidently, workers used soap to help get the pad into place on the pedal. Traces of that slippery soap remained, hence the problem.

The recall involves all 3,878 of the aesthetically-divisive angular trucks that have been sold so far. While some Tesla recalls are for software fixes that can be issued over-the-air, meaning a vehicle downloads an update without a trip to a mechanic, this one is a physical defect. It requires a physical repair.

This is the second soap-related manufacturing process to make headlines this month. A Boeing supplier recently defended the use of Dawn dish soap as lubricant in assembling door seals in manufacturing jets like the one that lost a door mid-flight.

Meanwhile, the Tesla Cybertruck, a vehicle with an extremely unusual manufacturing process, has also faced complaints since its launch about problems with rust and potentially finger-pinching trunks.

Classroom discussion questions:

Is this a quality issue–or a design issue?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of Cybertrucks, according to early reviews in auto magazines?

Teaching Tip: Is Amazon Benchmarking–or Cheating?

At the end of each chapter of our text, we present an Ethical Dilemma for class discussion. The Wall Street Journal‘s expose on Amazon (April 19, 2024), called “Inside Amazon’s Secret Operation,” provides one such issue. Here is a summary:

For nearly a decade, workers in a warehouse in Seattle have shipped boxes of shoes, beach chairs, Marvel T-shirts and other items to online retail customers across the U.S. The operation, called Big River Services, sells around $1 million a year of goods through e-commerce marketplaces including eBay, Shopify, Walmart and Amazon under made up brand names. “We are entrepreneurs, thinkers, marketers and creators,” Big River says on its website.

Big River’s website says it sells on Amazon’s marketplace but doesn’t mention anywhere that it is part of Amazon. It also misspells Seattle.

What the website doesn’t say is that Big River is an arm of Amazon that secretly gathers intelligence on its competitors. Amazon publicly says that it pays little attention to competitors, instead focusing all its energies on being “customer obsessed.”

But Big River team members attended their rivals’ seller conferences and met with competitors, identifying themselves only as employees of Big River, instead of disclosing that they worked for Amazon. They were given non-Amazon email addresses to use externally, but internally they used Amazon email addresses. They took extraordinary measures to keep the project secret, disseminating their reports to Amazon execs using printed, numbered copies rather than email. In the event of a leak they were told to say they were formed to improve the seller experience on Amazon, and that such research is normal.

“Amazon, like many other retailers, has benchmarking and customer experience teams that conduct research into the experiences of customers, including our selling partners,” says the firm. This benchmarking team got top corporate approval to buy inventory, use a shell company and find warehouses in the U.S., Germany, England, India and Japan so they could pose as sellers on competitors’ websites. To get information about rival logistics services, Big River stored inventory with companies including FedEx, UPS, and DHL.

Virtually all companies research their competitors, reading public documents for information, buying their products or shopping their stores. But lawyers say there is a difference between such corporate intelligence gathering of publicly available information, and what is known as corporate or industrial espionage. Companies that misrepresent themselves to competitors to gain proprietary information are open to suits on trade secret misappropriation.

Classroom discussion questions:

What are the ethical implications of Amazon’s actions?
How would such benchmarking be legal?

OM in the News: Dealing with Manufacturing Quality Issues

“Imagine a world in which every product that leaves a factory is flawless, every time,” writes The Wall Street Journal (March 18, 2024). What sounds like a plant manager’s dream is the end goal of zero-defect manufacturing, a term coined by Philip Crosby (and noted in Table 6.1 on page 217). Surging recalls have cast a harsh light on the quality of American manufacturing. But some companies say a combination of technology, training and focus can eliminate errors.

At Schneider Electric, employees are encouraged to speak up about product quality, anonymously if desired.

Ford’s CEO has said the automaker must reach “a zero defect destination,” and that the company has used assembly-line AI and extensive test drives to catch problems in its trucks. Stellantis, which is similarly targeting zero defects, said more than 100 new quality standards have led to a double-digit percentage drop in auto warranty claims. Companies in industries as varied as pharmaceuticals and snack foods have also announced zero-defect goals.

More manufacturers say they are aiming for perfection as quality-control problems have mounted. In 2022, auto makers spent record amounts on warranty claims. Recalls hit a six-year high in 2023, and jumped last year among pharmaceutical and food manufacturers. Undertrained workers, the increasing complexity of products and more sprawling supply chains were contributing to quality problems.

The zero-defects philosophy took shape in the early 1960s when defense contractor Martin-Marietta sought to eliminate errors from Pershing missiles. It had relied on inspections to find problems as small as a loose valve but refocused on prevention, exhorting workers with posters and rallies to do their jobs right the first time—followed by extensive audits. Errors at Martin plunged as hundreds of employees racked up long streaks of perfection. One worker made 500,000 solder connections without a mistake, while another put together 50,000 defect-free assemblies.

While quality programs helped U.S. companies improve their products considerably in the 1980s and 1990s, the effort stalled when businesses began outsourcing much of their work to low-cost regions.

This cost of poor quality can equate to at least 10% of sales once all factors, including the time spent dealing with problems, are taken into account. Human error is a perennial cause of defects, but it can be taken out of manufacturing systems. A machine can be built so it is impossible to load a tool backward, or an adhesive dispenser designed so it shuts off when it runs dry.

Classroom discussion questions:

Why do we write in Chapter 6 that “quality cannot be inspected” into a product?
How do “zero defects” and “six-sigma ” compare?

OM in the News: Behind Boeing’s Alaska Blowout

Just last week, we posted the story of Boeing’s intended takeover of its troubled fuselage provider, Spirit AeroSystems. Today’s post is a story of quality control at Boeing. You will recall that a door blew off an Alaska Airlines flight in January because a few bolts were not properly installed. Months before the 737 piece blew out midflight, the plane spent nearly three weeks shuffling down an assembly line with faulty rivets.

*Traveled work*—when work is completed out of the production line’s ordinary sequence—is a problem of Boeing’s safety culture.

In turns out that workers had spotted the bad parts almost immediately after the plane’s fuselage arrived at the factory from Spirit, reports The Wall Street Journal (March 12, 2024) . But they didn’t make the fix right away and the 737 continued on to the next workstation. (See the Chapter 9 photo on page 383 illustrating the assembly line process). When crews completed the repair 19 days later, they failed to replace four critical bolts on a plug door they had opened to do the job, leading to the accident.

At Boeing, there is a term for situations when work is completed out of the production line’s ordinary sequence: traveled work. This practice of completing work out of sequence is a liability when it comes to airplane quality. “The folks on the line, they know what it is,” Boeing CEO said. “It creates opportunities for failure.” Yet, four years ago, Boeing laid out 5 values central to improving safety. Number 3 on the list: eliminate traveled work.

Doing work out of order complicates the intricate, taxing process of putting together an airplane. In the 737 factory, each plane moves its way through a series of stations, where crews are tasked with completing certain tasks. Those stations are equipped with tooling, platforms and crews trained to do the jobs designated for the site. Planes advance to the next station every 24 hours. Keeping production lines moving even when certain parts aren’t available for a given job helps avoid costly slowdowns.

When a missing part prevents workers from finishing, the plane still moves ahead and the part gets added or repair is completed somewhere down the line. Sometimes, the work isn’t done until the plane leaves the factory. But the proper tooling may not be on hand there, leaving workers moving back and forth to get the necessary equipment.

Classroom discussion questions:

As the new OM head of the 737 line, what is your recommendation?
Can an assembly line like this be stopped?

OM in the News: AI in Manufacturing

Manufacturers are increasingly evaluating and adopting AI solutions to leverage their data, writes Industry Week (Feb. 13, 2024). Here are some key areas that stood out in how manufacturers are adopting the technology:

Quality control enhancement: AI can improve manufacturing quality control through vision systems trained on images and videos, accurately detecting complex product defects. Real-time monitoring identifies issues promptly to prevent future defects, and AI’s continuous learning enhances defect detection. (See Ch. 6)

Supply chain visibility: Manufacturers deal with enormous amounts of data in their operations, and the integration of AI technology allows real-time observation, quicker trend identification and more accurate forecasting to meet demand effectively. AI algorithms analyze historical sales data, market trends and external factors, enabling more precise demand forecasts and aligning production and inventory levels. In logistics, AI optimizes routes by analyzing transportation costs, delivery times and traffic patterns, enhancing efficiency and cost-effectiveness. The strategic use of AI in the supply chain offers benefits like improved visibility, increased agility and better planning, enhancing overall resiliency and responsiveness. (See Ch. 11)

Energy efficiency and resource utilization: Companies are using AI to optimize energy consumption and resource utilization in manufacturing processes. These capabilities analyze real-time data from sensors, production equipment and other sources to identify patterns and trends in energy usage. This can inform predictive recommendations to optimize energy consumption, reduce waste and enhance overall resource efficiency. (See Supp. 5)

Predictive maintenance improvement: The use of AI in predictive maintenance enables a shift from reactive to proactive strategies, leveraging data-driven approaches. AI algorithms analyze real-time data to predict maintenance needs and failures. AI identifies patterns on the factory floor, detecting anomalies and potential malfunctions. This proactive approach minimizes unplanned downtime, extends equipment lifespan and allows manufacturers to optimize resource allocation through scheduled service activities during planned downtime, enhancing overall productivity and reducing costs. (See Ch. 17)

The use of AI in manufacturing operations in coming years is expected to accelerate. Investment in AI technologies is forecast to rise among 96% of companies by 2030.

Classroom discussion questions:

How will AI become a common tool for operations managers?
Using a search engine, describe a real company example for these applications.

OM in the News: Is Allegiant Really One of America’s Best Airlines?

Perhaps surprising to students and professors who fly a lot, Allegiant Air took 3rd in The Wall Street Journal’s (Feb. 8. 2024) annual airline scorecard, which ranks nine major carriers on their operational performance.

It’s the highest finish for the Las Vegas-based no-frills airline. The smallest carrier in the rankings scored well in the categories of (1) fewest mishandled bags, (2) fewest cancellations and (3) fewest passengers involuntarily denied boarding.

Flying Allegiant does mean accepting limitations. Some routes are only available twice a week. If there is a cancellation, travelers could be stuck for days. It charges a host of fees for add-ons—picking a seat assignment, bringing a carry-on bag or even ordering a premium beverage. But Allegiant only flies nonstop, meaning fliers can avoid annoying layovers that increase the chances of a trip gone wrong.

Allegiant has grown more reliable. In 2022, it canceled 4.25% of its flights, the most of any airline in the WSJ rankings, and fewer than 2/3 of its flights arrived on time. It finished 5th overall in that 2022 rankings. In 2023, the airline canceled less than 1% of its flights and improved its on-time arrival percentage to 72.8%—10 points up from the year before. (Allegiant still finished 6th of 9 carriers for on-time arrivals.)

So what are its operation management advantages? First, Allegiant flew its planes for about 7.5 hours per day in 2023, hours less than Spirit and Frontier, which are its low-budget competitors. That relative infrequency gives Allegiant more time to recover if things do go wrong. Second, Allegiant flies less than Frontier and Spirit. It had 115,500 flights scheduled in 2023—60% of Frontier’s total and 38% of Spirit’s. Third, unlike Spirit and Frontier, Allegiant doesn’t oversell its flights, so it didn’t bump a single passenger last year. It also placed first in baggage.

Allegiant placed 5th in complaints in the rankings. It says it plans to add more self-service tools so customers can make changes on their own, as well as add more precise callback features. Allegiant had a higher rate of delayed flights than the larger airlines because of the infrequency of its routes and the fact that it frequents smaller airports. The airline says it would rather delay flights than cancel them.

Classroom discussion questions:

From an OM perspective, what is Allegiant doing well? Why?
How can it improve its perceived quality?

OM in the News: Have a Fear of Flying? Don’t Read Today’s Post

Airlines’ hiring binge has suddenly thrust many pilots behind the controls of different, bigger planes than they are used to flying, reports The Wall Street Journal (Nov. 8, 2023). That rapid advancement is fueling anxieties over whether pilots’ newness to certain aircraft could lead to serious incidents and accidents.

The union for Southwest’s pilots believes the airline’s initial training program needs a bigger revamp. Major carriers have added nearly 10,000 pilots to their ranks this year.

Pilot newness to airplanes’ make and model is among the factors officials have looked at since air travel’s fast, and often strained bounce back from the pandemic. This aspect of “juniority” has emerged in the aftermath of some serious problems over the last two years, leading pilots, airline officials and safety experts to scrutinize the experience level of the people in the cockpit.

With travel demand soaring, pilots are moving up through the ranks faster than before. Major carriers are pulling pilots from regional carriers more quickly, with pilots used to smaller airliners advancing to bigger planes, needing to learn new procedures, controls and quirks. Airlines that hurried pilots out the door during the height of the pandemic had to quickly pivot when demand surged back. Carriers have added 23,000 pilots to their ranks the past two years, dramatically higher than decade long averages.

There is precedent for concern. The U.S. Transportation Department found a correlation between accidents and pilot experience with aircraft type. Analyzing 322 airline accidents, the office found fewer accidents involving pilots who had more time flying the aircraft make and model.

The industrywide battle for pilots has jolted the methodical pilot career progress. Regional carriers are struggling to hold on to pilots for more than a few years. About 8,000 regional pilots are expected to move on to bigger airlines this year—44% of that workforce. Before the pandemic, regional pilot turnover was 10% to 20%.

“The pace of hiring and the resulting turnover is unprecedented. I do have a concern over the experience in seat,” said the CEO of one carrier. Some pilots are able to move from smaller planes to bigger ones or to upgrade from first officer to captain years faster than the decade-long waits they sometimes faced in the past. The chairman of the United pilots’ union said the airline’s internal monitoring systems have turned up issues that appear to be correlated with the amount of time pilots have spent in their seats.

Classroom discussion questions:

What tools in Chapter 6 of your Heizer/Render/Munson text could be used to analyze this potential problem?
What would quality guru Philip Crosby say about the issue? (see page 217)

OM in the News: 2022 Was Not a Quality Year for the Airlines

Chaos. Bedlam. A nightmare. Frustrated fliers spared no superlatives when describing the mess that unfolded in 2022 as travelers returned in full force.

Delta had the lowest cancellation rate among major carriers included in WSJ’s rankings.

Delta Air Lines’ CEO described 2022 as “the most difficult operational year in our history.” This from the airline that The Wall Street Journal (Jan. 19, 2023) ranked first among nine U.S. carriers in its 15th annual airline scorecard. Alaska Airlines, featured in the Global Company Profile in Chapter 15 of your Heizer/Render/Munson text was a repeat runner-up, followed by Southwest, United, Allegiant, American, Spirit, and Frontier. JetBlue finished last for the second consecutive year.

Airlines are ranked by seven equally weighted metrics covering flight cancellations, on-time arrivals, delays, involuntary bumping, baggage handling and complaints.

The reasons for the industry’s problems are well documented, if little comfort to travelers. Fuller flight schedules to meet a surge in travel demand collided with staffing shortages and training backlogs. Air-traffic control issues multiplied. Extreme weather spread throughout the country. The year was bookended by holiday travel woes, with a messy summer-vacation season and hurricane headwinds in between.

Delta retained its crown by navigating the hurdles better than peers, but was far from perfect. The airline took the top spot in 3 of the 7 categories, down from five in 2021. Its on-time arrival rate of 82% beat all competitors, but was still down from 88% in 2021. The airline that for years has pledged to “cancel cancellations” canceled nearly 31,000 flights, more than three times the number it called off in 2021. Seattle-based Alaska would have edged Delta in this category were it not for the storms that socked the Pacific Northwest in December.

Allegiant Air, the carrier that shuttles vacationers from smaller cities to holiday spots like Las Vegas, Florida and Arizona, was ranked 5th and canceled 4% of its flights, the most of any airline. It also had the lowest on-time arrival rate, at 63%. But the airline was helped by its top showing in baggage handling and involuntary bumping.

JetBlue earned the title no airline wants—worst performing U.S. carrier—because it posted relatively poor numbers in nearly every category. It blames continuing operational issues on its heavy concentration of flights in NYC and the congested surrounding states.

Classroom discussion questions:

How do your students rank these carriers?
What would be your strategy if you were Jet Blue’s operations manager?