Prof. Howard Weiss shares his teaching ideas with us monthly.
Atlanta’s Hartsfield Airport is the busiest airport in the world in terms of both passengers and aircraft, having served over 75 million passengers in 2021 and having 707,661 aircraft movements in the same year. In order to move passengers from one concourse to another the airport uses an automated people mover (APM) dubbed the “Plane Train” that is operating 60 feet below the airport. The plane train system consists of 11 trains which each have 4 cars. Together they have the capacity to transport 10,000 passengers per hour from one concourse to another. Daily ridership is 200,000 passengers.
The trains run in a loop as displayed below covering 2 miles in each direction. A four year $331 million project is currently underway on the Plane Train and 3 more trains are being added that will increase the capacity to 12,000 passengers per hour by 2024. This will reduce the maximum waiting time from the current 108 seconds to 90 seconds. There currently are 123 employees who work three shifts.
Chapter 17 of your textbook discusses maintenance and reliability. There are two train maintenance stations with 5 total bays located below ground. Preventive maintenance is performed during the night time when the number of passengers requiring transportation between terminals is greatly reduced. Given the daytime number of passengers requiring transportation from one station to another it is imperative that the trains are always operative. Therefore, maintenance is performed on all 11 trains every night with tasks ranging from minor to major. In addition, the tracks need to be maintained, so the system is shutdown Wednesdays at 1am for track maintenance. Furthermore, to maintain reliability the system has 12 cars which serve as backups to the 44 cars in the system.
The De Mar case study in your Design of Goods and Services chapter (Ch. 5) notes that De Mar uses performance measures and compensation that incorporate customer satisfaction. Similarly, for the Plane Train there are incentives to keep the trains operating. The maintenance teams will receive a bonus if they maintain 99.5% reliability. But if reliability does not reach 90% the workers will not be paid a bonus.
Discussion Questions –
- What will be the productivity change with respect to the additional 3 trains that are going to be added?
- The Plane Train operates 24 hours per day. What is the efficiency of the system?