Tag: video case studies

Video Tip: Our New Series of Five Alaska Airlines Videos

alaska air 2Over the past 21 years (7 editions of our OM texts), we have created a theme of sorts by focusing on an organization that we thought would be of interest to students. We did this by creating a series of customized videos and case studies featuring such firms as Hard Rock Café, Arnold Palmer Hospital, Frito-Lay, Darden (Red Lobster/Olive Garden), and the Orlando Magic. The videos are tailored directly to our book and terminology, so each fits perfectly in a specific chapter, with a goal of reinforcing content with exciting and well-known examples.

The new editions of OM 12/e and Principles of OM 10/e continue this tradition with a service firm that is consistently the highest ranked in the U.S. in its field–Alaska Airlines. Why did we select an airline? Over the years we discovered that faculty and students really enjoyed learning about OM in fields that they understand, especially service organizations. Although filming at Frito-Lay was one of my favorites ever, I think the 5 new videos and case studies on Alaska may become your favorites. Here they are:

Quality Counts at Alaska Airlines (Ch.6): “If it is not measured, it is not managed,” says one Alaska exec in this case that provides explicit performance metrics.

Alaska Airlines: 20-Minute Baggage Process–Guaranteed! (Ch.7): Students can flowchart the process a bag follows from kiosk to destination carousel after watching this video.

The People Focus: Human Resources at Alaska Airlines (Ch.10): The employee “Empowerment Toolkit” reminds me of Ritz Carlton’s famous customer service philosophy.

Lean Operations at Alaska Airlines (Ch.16): The company’s aggressive implementation of Lean includes its 6-sigma Green Belt training in-house, Kaizen events, Gemba Walks, and 5S applications.

Scheduling Challenges at Alaska Airlines (Module B): Good scheduling of crews and planes means optimization–the perfect fit for our coverage of LP. This video can also be shown with Ch. 15, Short Term Scheduling.

We think your students will appreciate the smooth integration of these great topics into your lectures. All videos are provided free to adopters and are also embedded in MyOMLab. The see a copy of the new edition, just click on the Order Desk Copy button on the top of the blog.

Video Tip: Starting Your Fall Semester With Videos

magicStarting about 20 years ago, with our 6th edition, Jay and I began developing a series of company video and cases. They have ranged  from manufacturers of potato chips, boats, and ambulances, to service firms like a hospital, an NBA team, Red Lobster, and Hard Rock.  The videos are brief (5 – 12 minutes) and tie directly to the content of a specific text chapter.  There may be as many as seven videos on one company (such as Arnold Palmer Hospital or Hard Rock Café) and students seem to like following one or two organizations throughout the text/semester.  We are very pleased, that over the years, our 35 videos have won many awards, including 2 Silver Addy’s for the best short video, selected from 10,000’s of entries each year. We are even up for an Emmy award for one of our Orlando Magic videos!

hard rockI have always started the first week of the semester with one or both of the following:  Hard Rock Café: OM in Services (8 minutes) and Frito-Lay:  OM in Manufacturing (7 minutes).  The first shows how a service firm that is known throughout the world approaches some of the 10 OM decisions around which we structure the text.  This firm is especially interesting because it is a lot more than a restaurant. We show that Hard Rock makes almost the same revenue from its small retail shops as it does from the food side of the house.

The second video provides a perfect contrast to Hard Rock and makes for a great class discussion on how manufacturers differ from service firms.  Frito-Lay is also a product everyone knows.  But this company does not let outsiders in to tour, and has proprietary processes that even we were not allowed to film.  This video reviews how Frito-Lay deals with all 10 of the decisions that OM managers have to make.

I hope our video series helps get your Fall, 2015 semester off to a successful start. And there is more to come, as we introduce five new videos featuring OM at Alaska Airlines in January, 2016!