Simultaneous Service Approach for Reducing Air Passenger Queue Time

Abstract

Simultaneous service offers service-oriented organizations, such as the air passenger transportation industry, the opportunity to differentiate themselves by providing superior customer service. The concept of simultaneous service is analogous to the concept of simultaneous engineering. However, while simultaneous engineering strives to minimize product development time, simultaneous service strives to minimize customer processing time. Overall customer processing time is reduced by the identification and simultaneous alignment of previously sequentially executed customer service activities. A simultaneous service approach was applied to the international ticketing counter at a major international airport. This involved developing both equipment and operational policy alternatives to the normal sequencing of the ticketing and baggage check-in process. A total of five alternative simultaneous service approaches were investigated. Simulation analysis of these alternatives indicates that a 36% improvement in customer queue and servicing time was possible with this approach.