Category Archives: Domestic Business

When Technology Fails

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OCTOBER 1, 2013

New Fairbanks Airport barricadeWe are certainly a technology driven society, with our ATMs and EFTs, on-line newspapers and e-books, robotic surgery and robotic butchering, and optical scanners. So what happens when something as simple as a phone app for navigation fails?

If you are headed for the Fairbanks, Alaska, Airport, just don’t ask your iPhone for help. The Detroit News (Sept. 27, 2013) reports that Apple has disabled driving directions to the Fairbanks International Airport after a glitch in its maps app guided drivers to the edge of a runway instead of a terminal.  Two times, drivers continued on and cut across an active runway to reach the terminal. Now, when someone puts in the airport as their final destination, a message pops up and says, “Directions not available, direction cannot be found between these locations.”

Previous directions on newer iPhones and iPads guided drivers to the edge of the tarmac instead of the correct route to the terminal. In incidents Sept. 6 and Sept. 20, drivers went through a gate, past warning lights and signs, and then across an active runway, to reach the terminal. The first mishap involved an out-of-state visitor trying to return a rental car before a flight, and the second was an Alaska resident trying to get to the airport.

The airport has since barricaded that entrance to the taxiway. A sign posted there gives a phone number for people to call to get the correct directions to the airport. After the first incident, airport authorities immediately contacted Apple requesting a fix.

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.

Textile Plants Humming Once Again in the Carolinas

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SEPTEMBER 23, 2013

The old textile mills in the Carolinas are mostly gone now. Gaffney Manufacturing, National Textiles, Cherokee — clangorous, dusty, productive engines of the Carolinas fabric trade — fell one by one to the forces of globalization. Just as the Carolinas benefited when manufacturing migrated first from England to New England and then to here, where labor was even cheaper, they suffered in the 1990s when the textile industry mostly left the US. It headed to China, India, Mexico — wherever people would spool, spin and sew for a few dollars or less a day.

But remarkably, Parkdale Mills, the country’s largest buyer of raw cotton, has reopened and is thriving–another indication of the resurgence of US manufacturing, reports The New York Times (Sept. 20, 2013) in its cover story. For example, just last year, clothing maker American Giant was buying fabric from a factory in India. Now, it is cheaper to shop in the US, using Parkdale yarn.

American manufacturing has several advantages over outsourcing. Transportation costs are a fraction of what they are overseas. Turnaround time is quicker. Most striking, labor costs aren’t that much higher than overseas because the factories that survived the outsourcing wave have turned to automation and are employing far fewer workers. Further, monitoring worker safety in places like Bangladesh, has become a huge challenge.

In 2012, textile exports were $22.7 billion, up 37% from just 3 years earlier. That the industry is thriving again is indicative of a broader reassessment by companies about manufacturing in the US. A recent M.I.T. survey found that 1/3 of American companies with manufacturing overseas said they were considering backsourcing some production, while 15% said they had already decided to do so. This means jobs–but on nowhere near the scale there was before, because machines have replaced humans at almost every point in the production process. Take Parkdale: The mill produces 2.5 million pounds of yarn a week with about 140 workers. In 1980, that production level would have required more than 2,000 people.

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.

New Looks at Loading and Boarding Planes

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SEPTEMBER 9, 2013

alaska air jetwayLoading an airplane quickly and efficiently isn’t an easy task. “It should be, and could be, but the humans involved can’t seem to get with the program,” writes Wired Magazine (Aug. 28, 2013). Better loading means more time in the air – which is where airlines make their money. The boarding process is far from standard – there are almost as many boarding procedures as there are airlines. This problem has long been pondered by operations managers, without a definitive answer. But there have been a few promising experiments.

The most unusual and deceptively simple idea is opening the door at the rear of the plane in addition to the door at the front. Alaska Airlines is trying this. The idea isn’t entirely new–many airlines open the front and rear doors at those airports where there is no jetway, only a staircase leading to the tarmac. Alaska has a new tool to help facilitate using both doors–a solar-powered ramp. Mounted on wheels, the ramp can be driven to the backdoor of the airplane, and passengers make two switch-back turns down the ramp to the ground, providing an alternative to stairs for easy suitcase rolling and wheelchair access. Using the aft door to unload passengers can reduce the turnaround time by 10 minutes.

One of the big reasons boarding has slowed to a crawl is people are carrying more bags aboard to avoid baggage fees. So American Airlines is experimenting with letting those who checked their bag board first. Ideally, these passengers will simply walk to their row and sit down. The airline says that overall it has shaved a few minutes off the boarding process.

Although airlines commonly board by sections, it’s generally a free-for-all with regard to where in that section you are. United uses the “outside-in” method of seating window passengers first, then middle, then aisle seats. The airline has been organizing passengers in better defined lines at the gate for each group, with the hope is there will be less of a bottleneck.

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.