M I S In Aviation Industry Information Technology Essay

It is currently the fastest growing industry in the world. 75 of the total industry is owned by private companies mainly in the domestic markets. The aviation industry is growing at compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18%. Airline companies lease or own their aircrafts or are into alliance with other companies with mutual benefits.

The aviation industry provides air transport services for passengers and freight. The industry is categorized into: domestic, international, intra-continental and intercontinental. Some companies are only into passenger or freight transportation whereas some are in both.

What is Management Information System (M.I.S.) ?

Management Information System is a process or a system that provides information to manage an organization efficiently.

MIS serve middle managers’ interest by providing current and historical performance information to aid in planning, controlling and decision making at the management level. MIS typically compress Transaction Processing System (TPS) data to present regular reports of the company’s basic operations.

M.I.S. in Aviation Industry

MIS covers all aspects of requirements of the airline industry in modular structure. The modular structure helps in segregating the departments and also creates a paperless office. The different types of modules are: 1. Finance and Accounting, 2. Inventory and procurement, 3. Reservation and ticketing, 4. Flight operation and engineering, 5.Marketing and statistics and 6. Personnel and payroll. The modules work independently as well as in an integrated environment and also sharing among themselves takes place.

Human resource and administration

Human Resource (H.R.) is a term used to describe the workforce of an organisation. H.R. is also the name given to the function within an organization that has the overall responsibility for implementing policies and strategies relating to the management of the workforce which comprises of the individuals working in the organization. Their main objective is to maximize return on investment and minimize financial risk by aligning the current workforce with the organization’s ongoing and future business plans.

Lufthansa Systems

Lufthansa systems are the leading IT service providers for aviation industry worldwide. They cover an entire range of IT services including consulting, development, implementation and operation solutions. Lufthansa systems are headquartered in Kelsterbach near Frankfrut, Germany. The company has offices in Germany and 14 other countries.

The range of products provided by Lufthansa systems include passenger management systems, planning and controlling fleets, aircraft rotations and crew deployment, system for fast and flexible pricing etc.

Crew Management

Crew management plays an important and a complex role throughout an airline’s network in which manpower planning, pairing construction, crew assignment and crew fairness, play an essential role.

During crew assignment, legal and economic considerations as well as need for supervision and training requirements must be taken into account and also crew’s wishes and preferences should have direct impact to ensure crew satisfaction. This system supports handling of preferences, requests and wishes through a web based crew information service. This system also allows quick response when searching for alternate solutions for problems caused by irregular operations. During these situations a direct and coordinated communication with operation control is needed and also direct information for crew members is also important. This system helps in reduced work load for crew management and tracking department but also streamlines the flow of information.

Features and functions:

The system provides the planners and controllers with a set of decision support which is semi-automatic as well as fully automatic. Therefore the users can properly concentrate on the maintenance and create efficient, legal, complete, economic and fair duty rosters.

The integration of this system will change the face of crew management significantly and will switch the role from a crew data administration to a manager of crew resources. This will change the way classical work-oriented and the modern cost-oriented approach to crew management in today’s industry.

Modules:

Manpower Planning: it calculates long and medium-term crew requirements and availability. In this module the estimation and calculation for crew requirement can be easily defined based on the data present in the system. Basic crew requirement for short-term, seasonal and long term planning are covered as well as effects of vacation requests and training requirements.

Pairing: it facilitates initial planning and maintenance of pairing. This comprises pairing according to flight schedules or for ground training purposes or for necessary reserve duties. Various powerful functions are supplied to the existing solution or simply expand it to a different time period. Various solutions can be stored in pairing scenarios.

Fairness: this module maintains individual reports and schedules such as number of flight hours, early reports etc. And the work is distributed fairly and the number of crew transports, night stops etc is minimized.

Preferences: in addition to the fair optimization, the preferences of the crew members are also taken into consideration. Preferences such as night stops at certain destinations, days off etc are also taken into consideration. For this the seniority of the employee and the number of fulfilled bids in the past are also taken into consideration.

There are many more modules for crew management but the above mentioned modules are of more importance.

Manpower Planning

The biggest expenditures for an airline are the personnel costs. Changes in fleet size, fleet composition, flight schedule and other factors influence crew availability and requirements. Therefore it is necessary to monitor crew availability versus demand constantly. The IT solutions allow seamless flow of information and provide decision support.

Manpower planning system was designed to maintain all the tasks related to long term calculation of crew personnel requirements. The Netline is another system which provides seamless flow of information and assures data consistency and consequently a high quality of planning based on the information.

With Manpower planning and Netline system airlines can achieve savings potential in administration as well as in training and personnel costs. More than 50 airlines worldwide rely on these systems every day.

Features and function:

Manpower planning is defining capacity reports based on Netline for long term, seasonal and short term planning. The user describes which values are necessary and how they are to be calculated from Netline data and past experiences.

This system also allows to maintain control over vacation planning process and it is also possible to create reports with free capacity and vacation requests.

For training purpose it is possible to plan courses and simulator missions for training groups. The reports for training planning ensure that suitable and sufficient capacity is available while also taking instructor availability into consideration.

System requirements:

UNIX server (HP-UX, AIX, Solaris, LINUX)

Client: Windows 98, XP, NT, 2000 or UNIX/ LINUX workstation

Java 1.3 and oracle database.

Crew Pairing

The personal cost of the employees are the major cost drivers within an airline, therefore efficient construction of pairings and duty periods is an important factor to consider. The Netline/ Crew pairing xOPT is the state-of-the-art technology that supports in producing fast and legal solutions.

This system covers the flight schedule and automatically provides information for crew operations. Netline/ Crew Pairing xOPT makes sure that all pairings comply with all the rules, regulations and policies of the country, union and airline standards. The operation performed by this system mainly includes balancing of crew home bases, minimizing costs for overall duty time, layover and crew transportation.

Netline/ Crew Pairing xOPT increases the performance of the pairing department as it will help to save crew related costs such as hotel accommodations, less deadhead flights etc. The solutions will be generated in no time and can be changed according to market demand or operational requirements. This system will also support in analyzing and evaluating several pairing scenarios for simulation purposes and therefore helps in choosing the best pairing solution for the airline.

Features and functions:

Flexible configuration: the system allows to quickly adapt to changes in requirements of rules, costs and settings.

Pairing imitation: the system allows to pair even though the planning groups and rules differ from each other. Therefore it is possible to merge the matching pairs of different planning groups.

Summary report: every solution creates a detailed and comprehensive report according to the scenario which allows comparing different pairing solutions. These reports serve as internal reporting and also allow analysing possible scenarios for network management.

Integration: no interface between core application and optimizer is required and ensures that data and rules are consistent and have to be updated just once.

Quick start option: allows obtaining quick solutions using data saved by previous runs.

Interim solution: for longer runs interim solutions can be generated to have a glance or to detect a possible constraint.

System requirements:

UNIX Server (LINUX, fast multi core CPU recommended)

Oracle database.

Fairness and Preferences

Due to the highly volatile nature of the airline industry and operational requirements, it is a challenging task to support the airline’s stability. To achieve this stability they have to create a solution to put the right crew on the right plane at the right time. This system will support the airline’s crew scheduling department efficiently in generating fast, legal and cost effective solutions that also take crew’s aspects into considerations.

The system assigns flight hours, stopovers, duty shifts equally to all crew members. The fair distribution principle minimizes overtime costs and prevents the under-utilization of individual crew members.

The preferences system goes one step further and also takes into consideration the preferences of individual crew member while simultaneously generating fair solutions that will significantly increase crew loyalty.

Functions and features:

Flexible configuration: the system allows to quickly adapt to changes in requirements of rules, costs and settings.

Fair distribution rules: any property can be easily defined as solution targets for fair distribution of duty assignments.

Cost adjustments: the optimizer continuously allow adjusting the cost trade-off between the cost-oriented solution and fair distribution-oriented solution that reflects the crew interests.

Pre-assigned duties: the system processes pre-assigned duties, grants requests for the optimization runs.

Integration: no interface between core application and optimizer is required and ensures that data and rules are consistent and have to be updated just once.

Quick start option: allows obtaining quick solutions using data saved by previous runs.

Interim solution: for longer runs interim solutions can be generated to have a glance or to detect a possible constraint.

System requirements:

UNIX Server (LINUX, fast multi core CPU recommended)

Oracle database.

Conclusion

Human resource or the crew is the most valuable resource of the company and managing the most valuable resource is a challenging business. The key to a smooth and profitable organization is the crew and customer satisfaction. Therefore the main concern is a safe, on-time and cost efficient operation and also an understanding of the situation among all the departments is mandatory. Therefore today’s airline industry relies on information systems to streamline the day-to-day work and decision making process.

The information system segregates the work and creates an efficient paperless office. The Lufthansa systems have developed very efficient, user-friendly and powerful systems to control the human resource and crew management of the company. The solutions developed by the Lufthansa systems are used by 50 airlines worldwide on daily basis mainly due to some of the following reasons:

Saves crew costs through high efficient pairing solutions.

Increases performance through automated support.

Allows fast adjustments to market demands.

Cuts crew costs through improved crew productivity.

Helps to evaluate best solutions through summary reports.

Increases crew satisfaction through fair and preference oriented solutions.

The systems used for these solutions require limited hardware and does not require continuous updating. The system gives all possible solutions for regular or irregular situations and also gives interim report for longer runs.

The system manufactured by Lufthansa systems are efficient and reduces work load and simultaneously streamlines the work for better output and productivity. I do believe with the company’s tagline, “IT that makes your life easier”

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