Tag: maintenance

OM in the News: Autonomous Cars May Not Need a Driver, But They Still Need a Good Mechanic

One of the cars being used by Waymo in the Phoenix area to test driverless technology

Waymo, one of the leading forces in self-driving technology, is enlisting the largest auto retailer in the U.S., AutoNation, to maintain and repair the growing number of driverless vehicles Waymo is testing around the country. Waymo — a unit of Google’s parent, Alphabet — is moving a step closer to putting driverless vehicles into ride-hailing fleets that would serve the general public, not just its own employees. Maintaining expensive and technology-packed self-driving vehicles is a main challenge for using them in moneymaking businesses, like ride-hailing fleets, writes The New York Times (Nov. 3, 2017). 

Says AutoNation’s CEO. “In most cases, driverless vehicles in such fleets will have to be on the road almost around the clock to offset the cost of the sensors, computer chips, software and other systems that allow them to drive safely and reach their destinations without human operators. These vehicles need to be in service for hundreds of thousands of miles, much more than personal-use vehicles, to make them economically viable. To do that, you have to do much more proactive, preventative maintenance than what a normal person would do on a car.”

Because the vehicles are intended to operate without drivers, breakdowns have to be avoided and parts replaced when signs of wear first appear, not when they fail or when a warning light comes on. They need to work not 99% of the time, but 100% of the time.

Auto dealers, like AutoNation, sell cars, but a big chunk of their profits comes from servicing vehicles. They are looking for ways to become more relevant if car usage becomes more of a shared service.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. How is this an OM decision by Waymo?
  2. How will the auto industry be impacted by driverless cars?

OM in the News: Reliabilty and Maintenance Secrets of the Airlines

“Airlines are pouring lots of time and money into understanding fleet reliability,” reports The Wall Street Journal (Oct. 12, 2017). Delta put together a team of mechanics, engineers and data geeks to find ways to make specific types of planes less prone to breakdowns. American has renewed efforts to schedule flights so each type of plane performs better.

“It’s not necessarily the airplane itself. It’s how we’re operating it,” says American’s VP. If no planes are reserved as spares, fleets become less reliable. Small fleets spread out among multiple hub airports often suffer higher cancellation rates because there aren’t opportunities to swap planes. Time scheduled for routine maintenance can get crimped if the planes get to mechanics late day after day. In 2016 American had 6 different kinds of wide-body jets flying international trips from Chicago. Reliability suffered. When glitches hit, the airline had little ability to swap planes.

Summer reliability is critical for airlines. Among the worst-performing planes were United 747s, which arrived on-time an average 63% of flights during the past 2 summers. United says it has worked the last several years on improving the reliability of the wide-bodies to achieve better on-time performance. Wide-body cancellations are down 60% since 2014.

Delta’s technical data team can not only predict which parts are liable to break, but also redesign some parts to make them more reliable and add monitors to track the health of parts on older jets. Suspect parts get replaced proactively ahead of manufacturers’ recommended replacement schedules, dramatically cutting cancellations. In 2010, Delta had 5,600 flights canceled by maintenance problems. Last year breakdowns caused only 303 cancellations, and the airline has suffered only 70 so far in 2017. Delta also loads seven 40-foot trailers each summer and sends mechanics out with the equipment to small cities to create temporary maintenance bases for specific types of planes. Last summer they were positioned in 7 spoke cities to do preventive maintenance on planes parked overnight there.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. Why do reliability figures differ dramatically among airlines and plane models?
  2. What is the “secret” to picking an on-time flight?

OM in the News: Maintenance, Reliability and the McFlurry

Employees often just say the machine is down rather than reassembling it. Here an employee spills ice cream mix all over herself while trying to fill the machine.
Employees often just say the machine is down rather than reassembling it. Here an employee spills ice cream mix all over herself while trying to fill the machine.

Why is the McDonald’s McFlurry ice cream machine down again? “The interruption in ice cream, milkshake and McFlurry service is so widespread that it has spawned an avalanche of social-media complaints in the U.S. and abroad—and conspiracy theories,” writes The Wall Street Journal (Jan. 20, 2017).

“I’m convinced there’s no way an ice cream machine would be down all the time with no replacement or repair of the machine,” says one NY college student.  After experiencing downed machines numerous times, another student had a meltdown, which she captured on Facebook. The video rant received 1 million views and 5,000 comments, many of which came from customers with the same complaint.

Fans say they love the texture of the McFlurry’s hard, crunchy candy and smooth, creamy, vanilla soft serve. (A 16-ounce McFlurry contains 930 calories and 128 grams of sugar, more than three 12-ounce cans of Coke, by the way.)

In the years since the McFlurry made its debut on the menu in 1998, it has garnered a cult following. And the cravings for it often come on suddenly and late at night. That may be part of the problem.

McDonald’s requires the machines to undergo a nightly automated heat cleaning cycle of up to 4 hours to destroy any bacteria in them. Getting the machines ready for the cleaning cycle is an 11-step process that involves combining a sanitizing mix with warm water, removing and rinsing 7 parts, brushing clean 2 fixed parts for 60 seconds and wiping down the machine with a sanitized towel. Once the heat cycle begins, it can’t be interrupted because the product is hot and under extreme pressure.

One survey found 25% of the restaurants weren’t serving ice cream because the machines were reported not to be functional. Downed ice cream machines is now the most common service-related complaint among McDonald’s customers.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. What are the OM issues here?
  2. Have students had similar complaints? Suggestions?

OM in the News: Terrorists, the Electric Grid, and OM

 

utilities“Large U.S. utilities are joining forces to stockpile critical pieces of electrical equipment that can be rushed to power companies if they are hit by terrorist attacks, earthquakes or other disasters that could cause extended blackouts,” writes The Wall Street Journal (April 7, 2016). The new Grid Assurance Corporation will store circuit breakers, large transformers and other crucial parts at secure, unidentified locations, and sell them to participating utility companies who need them during emergencies. The venture underscores the growing concern about coordinated attacks and natural disasters that could cripple parts of the country’s electric grid. In 2013, gunmen stood outside an electrical substation near San Jose, Calif., and shot up 17 transformers funneling electricity to Silicon Valley. The transformers were damaged but not destroyed. Nevertheless, the incident spread fear that attacks on multiple substations could unleash lengthy power outages that would cripple other services, such as water treatment and police and fire response.

Currently, there is no federal requirement that power companies share equipment. While all utilities keep replacement equipment, some parts, such as spare transformers, typically sit close to where they may be needed because they can weigh more than 500,000 pounds. That makes them vulnerable to being damaged alongside the equipment in use, in an attack or a natural disaster. “The last thing we want is for someone to do a physical attack and wipe out our spares, too,” said one power company VP.

Many electric power components are hand-built, manufacturing capacity is limited, and ordering them anew requires waits of up to 18 months. While that is acceptable for routine replacement, since the gear often lasts 30 years or more, it is too slow for an emergency.The participants in Grid Assurance estimate they will need at least 100 transformers, often costing $2-$10 million each, so the venture will be expensive, but far less costly than a major blackout.

As we note in the text, combining (aggregating)  inventory  can reduce costs, reduce maintenance repair time, and increase up-time.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. Why is this inventory issue different from other industries?
  2. What OM tools can be used to tackle a problem such as this?

OM in the News: Why Los Angeles Should Read Chapter 17

A recent water main rupture in Los Angeles
A recent water main rupture in Los Angeles

We know that not every OM instructor covers Chapter 17, Maintenance and Reliability. It is after all, the last chapter in a long text. But if Jay has told me once, he has lectured me a 1,000 times: “Maintenance is one of the most critical of the 10 OM decisions that managers make!”  And so it appears that the city of Los Angeles should have been reading Chapter 17 for the past 3 decades.

As The New York Times (Sept. 2, 2014) reports: “The scene was apocalyptic: a torrent of water from a ruptured pipe valve bursting through Sunset Boulevard, hurling chunks of asphalt 40 feet into the air as it closed down the celebrated thoroughfare and inundated the campus of UCLA. By the time emergency crews patched the pipe, 20 million gallons of water had cascaded across the college grounds.”

It was just the latest sign of a continuing breakdown of the public works skeleton of the U.S.’s 2nd-largest city: its roads, sidewalks and water system. With each day, another accident illustrates the cost of deferred maintenance on public works, with an estimated $8.1 billion it would take to do the necessary repairs. The city’s annual budget is $26 million. LA’s problems reflect the challenges many American cities face after years of recession-era belt-tightening prompted them to delay basic maintenance. “It’s part of a pattern of failing to provide for the future,” said one UCLA prof.

The average LA car owner spends $832 a year for repairs related to the bad roads, the highest in the nation. Families here routinely spring for expensive strollers to handle treacherous sidewalks. Close to 40% of the region’s 6,500 miles of roads and highways are graded D or F. More than 4,000 of the 10,750 miles of sidewalks are in severe disrepair. More than 10% of the 7,200 miles of water pipes were built 90 years ago. At the current level of funding, it would take the city 315 years to replace them.

Classroom discussion questions:

1. Why is maintenance such an important part of OM?

2. What strategy might LA take at this point?

OM in the News: Delta’s Unorthodox Scheduling System

Delta's Control Room
Delta’s Control Room

“The crew of Delta Air Lines  Flight 55 last Thursday couldn’t legally fly from Lagos, Nigeria, to Atlanta unless they waited a day due to new limits on how much pilots can fly in a rolling 28-day period,” writes The Wall Street Journal (April 3, 2014). The trip would have to be canceled. Instead, Delta headquarters told the captain to fly to San Juan, which they could reach within their duty limits. There, two new pilots would be waiting to take the Boeing 767 on to Atlanta. The plane arrived in San Juan at 2:44 a.m., quickly took on fuel and pilots, and landed in Atlanta only 40 minutes late.

The episode, unorthodox in the airline industry, illustrates the fanaticism Delta now has for avoiding cancellations. Last year, Delta canceled just 0.3% of its flights. That was twice as good as the next-best airlines, Southwest and Alaska, and five times better than the industry average of 1.7%.

As it cut cancellations with a more-reliable operation, overall on-time arrivals improved and Delta has fewer delays. Managers in Delta operations center (featured in our Global Company Profile  in Chapter 15) move planes, crews and parts around hourly trying to avoid canceling flights. How well an airline maintains its fleet and how smartly it stashes spare parts and planes at airports affect whether a flight goes or not. Delta’s new analytical software and instruments that can help monitor the health of airplanes and predict which parts will soon fail. Empty planes are ferried to replace crippled jets rather than waiting for overnight repairs. Typically the airline has about 20 spare airplanes of different sizes each day. About half are stationed in Atlanta and the rest spread around other domestic hubs and two in Tokyo.

Classroom discussion questions:

1. Why have Delta’s operations managers focused on cancelling fewer flights?

2. How does Delta’s fleet age (one of the oldest in the industry) impact this strategy?

OM in the News: Sears Suffers as it Skimps on Maintenance

The Wall Street Journal (Nov.17, 2011) writes: ” In a holiday season when all retailers are worried about luring customers into their stores, Sears faces an extra challenge: Some of its stores are dumpy”. It turns out that the chain has skimped on maintenance at its aging stores since it merged with Kmart six years ago. “No one really comes here anymore”, says a customer at a Dallas Sears store, as she walks around an empty store devoid of any sign of holiday cheer. By contrast, the Macy’s store next door was festooned with fake presents, oversized bows, and prominently displayed Christmas stockings. Customers were streaming in.

Maintenance, our topic in Chapter 17, is important for a fresh atmosphere that signals to shoppers that products are up-to-date and worth buying. Even Wal-Mart, known for its Spartan operations, spent billions on renovations in recent years. And Macy’s just announced a $400 million renovation of its flagship NYC store. By comparison, Sears spent only $441 million maintaining all of its 3,100 stores last year. That comes out to about $1.90 per square foot. Store chains typically spend $6-$8 a foot on annual maintenance, so Sears is sitting at about 1/4 of what it needs to spend to keep stores an acceptable level at which to shop.

Consumer Growth Partners, a consulting firm, rates the Sears fleet as the most rundown in US retailing. Adds  Columbia U. Prof. Mark Cohen: “There is no viable retail strategy here. In retailing, when your stores get dark, dirty, and grim, you are past the point of no return”.

Discussion questions:

1. Why is Sears spending such a small amount on maintenance?

2. Why is maintenance one of the 10 decisions operations managers deal with?

OM in the News: Service Quality vs. Maintenance Time at Disney World

You might not think that maintenance of  Walt Disney World’s monorail line in Orlando would be a controversial topic (see Ch.17). But the Orlando Sentinel (July 12, 2011) reports that plans to give maintenance crews more time to work on the aging system are certain to anger Disney’s premium-paying hotel guests. Disney had previously kept its trains running until at least 1 1/2 hours after theme parks closed.  Now service will shut down 1 hour after normal closing hours.

The beef is that guests who stay at these hotels on Disney property have “late night privileges”. This means the parks will stay open for them–and not for regular guests–  as late as 3 am and then reopen at 7 am. But Disney says that trains take 90 minutes to “cycle down” and another 90 to “cycle up” the next  morning, leaving only 1 hour of downtime for maintenance.

Reliability has suffered in recent years, perhaps because of the limited repair time. In 2009, the monorail system lost power at 1 am and it took Disney’s crews 3 hours to unload the weary passengers. “It’s been pretty obvious that transportation maintenance is one of the areas they cut back on during the recession”, says the popular website  Disney Blog. The blog also predicts Disney will suffer a backlash from guests staying at the most expensive hotels on the property, since they are the ones who “expect the most preferential treatment”.

Discussion questions:

1. Discuss the tradeoff between customer service and the need for more maintenance time.

2. What else can Disney do to deal with the problem?

OM in the News: Maintenance at Southwest Airlines

Maintenance may not be the most exciting of all the topics we teach in OM (see Ch.17), but when it’s not done right, it certainly is the most critical. Southwest Airlines found this out–and barely dodged a bullet–when a 5-foot hole ripped through the roof of one of its Boeing 737-300 jets on April 1st. The near tragedy occurred at 35,000 feet during a flight from Phoenix to Sacramento. At least 2 people passed out and a few were injured with the explosive incident, which caused a loss of cabin pressure.

According to the FAA, the airline found and fixed 21 cracks in the fuselage of the same plane 11 months ago during a weeklong inspection. (The 15 year-old plane is part of an old fleet of 288 Boeing 737-300s flying at Southwest–out of 931 worldwide). Today’s New York Times (April 4, 2011) reports that Southwest has cancelled 100’s of flights and found identical cracks in two other 737s.  “It’s amazing it didn’t rip open further”, says a plane maintenance expert.

Southwest has a history of maintenance problems. In 2008, the FAA set a $10.2 million penalty for the airline’s failure to check for fuselage fatigue cracking. In July, 2009, a football-sized hole blew during a flight over West Virginia. Details of the FAA settlement for improved maintenance are considered proprietary. Southwest plans to phase out the older models over the coming years but would be “putting those aircraft that had ‘no findings’ back into immediate service”.

As we wrote in Ch.17, “Maintenance can improve quality, reduce costs, and win orders. It can also be a matter of life and death”.

Discussion questions:

1. What can Southwest, and other airlines, do to prevent such incidents?

2. Why does finding these cracks cost so much and take so long?