At Chicago’s Midway Airport on Jan. 2, Southwest Airlines canceled a third of its flights, lost 7,500 bags and, at one point, had 66 aircraft on the ground—about twice as many as the carrier has gates. Passengers were stuck on the tarmac late into the night.  A severe snowstorm was the main culprit, but Southwest managers also blamed ramp workers, suggesting that 1/3 of them called in sick to protest slow contract talks. The workers say they are chronically understaffed and are being blamed for executives’ mismanagement.

Maybe  Southwest is showing its age–43, writes The Wall Street Journal (April 2, 2014). Once the industry’s brassy upstart, the airline has begun to resemble the rivals it once rebelled against: carriers that were slow-growing, complex and costly to run. As we point out in Figure 2.8 on page 42, to help keep things simple and cost-effective, the airline flies one model of plane— 737—with lean, highly productive employees. Southwest employees do have a more demanding workload compared with others. The airline carries about 3,000 passengers per full-time employee, compared with 1,350 passengers per employee at its bigger rivals. But the average Southwest worker earned nearly $100,000 in 2012– compared with $89,000 at a traditional airlines.

The OM challenges are many.  Southwest is flying fuller planes, connecting more passengers and serving bigger airports that are prone to delays. As a result, some of its operational ratings have plummeted. Last year, it lost more bags per passenger than any other carrier. And after years as one of the most punctual airlines, just 72% of Southwest’s flights were on time in the 4th quarter—dead last in the industry. Further, from 2007 through 2012, Southwest’s cost to fly a seat one mile rose 42%—more than any other major U.S. airline. Southwest also faces costly upgrades to its outdated computer systems—a holdover from its simpler days—to bring them in line with industry standards.  After snowstorms forced airlines to cancel thousands of flights this winter, other carriers’ computers automatically rebooked many customers. But at Southwest, employees had to manually reschedule each disrupted passenger.

This post provided courtesy of Jay and Barry’s OM Blog at www.heizerrenderom.wordpress.com. Professors Jay Heizer and Barry Render are authors of Operations Management , the world’s top selling textbook in its field, published by Pearson.

Operating rooms at St. John’s Regional Health Center, an acute-care hospital in Missouri, had been running at 100% capacity. When emergency cases—which make up about 20% of the full load—arose, the hospital was forced to bump long-scheduled surgeries. As a result, doctors often waited several hours to perform 2-hour procedures and sometimes operated at 2 a.m. Staff members regularly worked unplanned overtime. The hospital was constantly behind, according to this interesting article in Strategy + Business(Spring, 2104).

The rather surprising solution: Leave one room unused. Crazy idea? The facility was already being squeezed, and now comes a recommendation to take away even more capacity?

On the surface, St. John’s lacked operating rooms. But what it actually lacked was the ability to accommodate emergencies. Because planned procedures were taking up all the rooms, unplanned surgeries required a continual rearranging of the schedule—which had serious repercussions for costs and even quality of care. The key to finding a solution was the fact that the term unplanned surgery is a bit misleading. The hospital can’t predict each individual procedure, but it knows that there will always be emergencies. Once a room was set aside specifically for unscheduled cases, all the other operating rooms could be packed well and proceed unencumbered by surprises. The empty room thus added much-needed slack to the system. Soon after implementing this plan, the hospital was able to accommodate 5.1% more surgical cases overall, the number of surgeries performed after 3 p.m. fell by 45%, and revenue increased. And in the two years that followed, the hospital experienced a 7 and 11% annual increase in surgical volume.

This post provided courtesy of Jay and Barry’s OM Blog at www.heizerrenderom.wordpress.com. Professors Jay Heizer and Barry Render are authors of Operations Management , the world’s top selling textbook in its field, published by Pearson.