5BUS1199 Introduction to Operations Management

5BUS1199 Introduction to Operations Management

Assignment CW1– Airport Bio Security-Brief

Module Mark

This is an individual report that comprises 100% of the module mark.

Background

Almost every challenge in aviation requires a team effort to solve it. Today we face the biggest challenge in commercial aviation’s history: Restarting an industry that largely has ceased to operate across borders, while ensuring that it is not a meaningful vector for the spread of COVID-19.

Meeting this challenge will mean making significant changes across air travel experience: pre-flight, at the departure airport, onboard, and post-flight.

• It will require governments to assume broad new responsibilities in terms of assessing and identifying traveller health risks, as governments did for security after 9.11;

• Airlines and airports will need to introduce and adapt processes and procedures to minimize contagion risk in the airport and aircraft environments;

• Passengers will need to be empowered to take more control of their travel journey, including responsibly assessing their own level of health risk before a journey.

• Measures should be introduced as far upstream as possible in the travel process;
  • to minimize risk of contagion in the airport environment
  • ensure that passengers arrive at the airport ready to travel
• Collaboration between governments and industry is vital — a single roadmap of measures should be adopted globally

The Goal is to restore air connectivity and to do it with an internationally consistent, mutually accepted, and harmonized way.

Extract from - Bio security for Air Transport -(Nick Careen, IATA, May 2020)

Situation

The recent world pandemic threat from Covid – 19 has receded as vaccination of citizens has-been carried out on a mass scale. Air travel is a possibility again. However, there is a lack of trust that the passengers boarding planes have been adequately checked to make sure they have a low bio security risk. This uncertainty will take time to diminish in time as travellers and governments adjust to new condition for air travel.

If you consider the comments from IATA representative, that every country checks outbound passengers, departing from their airports, then flying passengers should feel safe and so will the arrival country. Gradually the numbers of passengers and flights will increase.

Operations Impact

Countries see bio security risk as an ongoing transmission risk to their population and want to design a system that has a similar purpose as physical security checks and passport checks. The aim is to avoid passengers and staff at airports entering that environment with any preventable, transmissible, infectious disease. In effect, to create a safe bio-secure bubble in the terminal.

The solution is to consider infectious diseases after Covid -19, as a continuing threat to national bio security. The objective is to develop the process, of passengers arriving at an airport to travel, as a supply chain and the departure to another destination, as a distribution chain.

Consideration needs to be given to passenger volumes to be processed at the first stage of the restart and what this would look like on a staged increase in demand until pre Covid -19 passenger numbers are reached. At present the focus is on redesign and Phase 1.

Airport Expectations

The airport management and Operations Group have been considering what might be the outcome of the aftermath of this dramatic shock to their industry.Theyare determined to relook at the whole process of passenger checks and not just keep adding more steps to the existing processes. They have these concerns.

• They believe the current checking process simply won’t work going forward.
• They don’t want people, staff or passengers coming into their environment with a possible infectious disease.
• They can’t see any way they could operate the airport with people standing 2 meters apart. Quest would be kilometres long inside and outside the terminals.
• They are concerned that adding the bio security check, to the existing checking process, would take a passenger up to an hour to pass through to airport lounges.

Thinking about some high-level objectives they have come up with the following thoughts.

• Create a bio secure environment within the terminal building.
• Move the majority of the checking process online.
• Minimise the resources required for checking at the airport.
• Reduce the pass-through time and stress for passengers to clear the checking process.
• Use contactless interactions with humans in the airport environment.
• Use technology for any physical handling interactions of passengers. (Robotics, RFID, X-ray, Sonar, Infrared.)
• Have a robust rejection / rework process that does not offend or delay passengers unduly.
• Design a ‘whole life cycle ‘for the passenger journey to maximise sustainable benefits.

Scope

The diagram showing the broad steps, from pre-flight to boarding are to be the main focus and scope of your response. (Circled in red.) However, the handling of different destinations, in the distribution chain, will impact the supply side of the process. The airside of the destination process is out of scope.

To start the reintroduction of passenger flows to the five Heathrow Airport Terminals, the Operations Group have decided to design the first phase of the redevelopment. The configuration is to process 50% of the total passenger population at the June 2020 level. The statement below gives the details for the calculation. The design solution is to be based upon just one terminal configuration and assumes each terminal receives a fifth of the total passenger numbers.

“The airport added passenger numbers were down 95 per cent in June compared to the previous year, with just 350,000 people travelling through the airport in total.”

(ATIA, May 2020)

Task 1(Approx. 1000 Words)

Design a new checking process and describe the key activities for passengers to undertake at a terminal. The response should include the following information.

• How the strategy meets the objectives of the Airport management.
• A process diagram of the key process components including:-
  • passenger flow
  • information flow
  • A description of the new pre arrival and checking process.
  • A layout of checking stream and multiple streams.

Task 2(Approx. 1000 Words)

Consider the role of Operations Manager responsible for the bio security at Heathrow airport. Prepare a framework for the efficiently operation ofbio security screening of check-in passengers.

Consider the following:-

• Organisation plan with roles and responsibilities
• Produce a capacity calculation of the passenger numbers to be processed initially.
• Produce a high-level quality plan for the new checking process.
• Scale of operations to cope with fluctuations in passenger numbers.
• Identify the sustainability benefits of the new design.

Please use academic viewpoints, theories and models to support your written responses.

Submission Format

The submission is to be in report format on A4 format, Microsoft Word, .docx file type. (Landscape for mat can be used for diagrams or illustration. The uploaded file is to be in the format Last name_ student number.docx

The layout for the report.

• Title page – Module Name and number, Student name and number, assignment heading
• Contents page – Section heading and page number, figure and table description and numbers
• Section Headings – Sub-sections numbered, page numbers
• References
• Appendices – If necessary

Support Information

Lessons 1 –6, content.

Operations Management, Nigel Slack, and Alistair Brandon-Jones, 2019

IATI – Bio security for Air Transport – Nick Careen, May 2020

https://www.iata.org/contentassets/4cb32e19ff544df590f3b70179551013/biosecurity-air-transport.pdf

IATA – Bio security for Air Transport V2

https://www.iata.org/contentassets/4cb32e19ff544df590f3b70179551013/biosecurity-air-transport.pdf

Changi Airport adopts contactless, cleaning innovations. Jul 2020– (2 min.)

https://youtu.be/bLKezoRA3lw

US Govt – Centre for Disease Control and Prevention

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/organizations/testing-non-healthcare-workplaces.html

Fly Safe – Heathrow

https://www.heathrow.com/at-the-airport/fly-safe

Bio security Testing – inbound passengers – Staff public spaces

https://www.biosecurity-systems.com/inbound-solution

Yahoo news. Heathrow Testing - Oct 2020

https://news.yahoo.com/uk-plans-one-hour-covid-221947229.html

6 Potential bio security risks to staff

https://www.boplan.com/en/6-potential-risks-airport-ground-staff

Reducing Bio Security risks

https://www.nti.org/about/biosecurity/

Guidelines

Academic references to be used to support your presentation. Refer to UH Harvard reference guide.

https://www.studynet1.herts.ac.uk/ptl/common/asu.nsf/Teaching+Documents?Openview&count=9999&restricttocategory=Harvard+Referencing+and+Academic+Integrity

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