QUALITY MANAGEMENT TOOLS CASE STUDY - ETIHAD AIRLINE
1. UAE Aviation Sector -Introduction
In recent decade or so the
UAE government ad Dubai Emirates is making a long-term effort to diversify the nation’s
economy and make it less dependent upon the hydrocarbon sector which is getting
depleted. The diversification of the economy is more significant in the wake of
the oil price decline in recent times as the government has struggled to generate
enough hydrocarbon revenue to finance increasing infrastructure requirements. The
UAE Airlines and aviation sector has in recent times grown by as much as17-18%
CAGR as the emergence of Dubai and Abu Dhabi tourist destinations has made it a
world class tourist attraction. The Middle East hospitality is also responsible
for the economy attracting millions of tourists each year. In the backdrop of
the new transformation of the UAE economy the emergence of airline like Etihad
(which is the national carrier) , Emirate Airlines and Fly Dubai etc. has
emerged as new hope of the country for providing an excellent opportunity to
the country to host the incoming tourist flow and earn valuable currency and
generate more than a million jobs in the sector in the last decade alone.
A Statistical Analysis Of How Major Airlines In The Middle East Perform On Social Media
2.Etihad and its Quality Mission.
Etihad Airlines is the designated national carrier of the
UAE and is based out o its primary hub of Abu Dhabi. The UAE government backed
Etihad has maintained an excellent and modern fleet which is on an average is less than 5.8 years old and
travels to more than 120 cities of the world operating one thousand and two
hundred flights each week. For better services being generated the company’s
management always emphasize on phasing out aircrafts which are older and place
orders for new aircrafts and most of the
aircrafts are taken on lease for the leasing companies which are mostly
UAE banks. Etihad because of t its excellent service quality has bene
continuously adjudged in the top 5 airlines of the world an has carried a little
over 2 million fliers in the calendar year 2017.
Etihad Airlines -
Quality
mission
The Quality objectives of the UAE national carriers is
described as given below:
1.
The Etihad airlines aims to become the
best airlines of the world and has been quite successful in being adjudged the
best and continuously ranked in the top 5 airlines of the world.
2.
The Management of the Etihad airlines
has always been trying to introduce more innovations in order to bring higher
levels of comfort for the fliers and provide more benefits to the fliers.
3.
It employs staff not only from UAE but
also more than 50countries to make the workforce diversified and keeps
providing them training to improve the quality of the services.
4.
It has undertaken quite a large no of
code sharing contracts with leading regional carriers of Europe, Africa and
South America and US to provide reginal connectivity to the millions of fliers.
5.
It has bene staidly introducing new
destinations each year to increase its overall reach an make sure the fliers
capacity and capacity utilization increase each year by 2-3%.
Research Objectives & Challenges Faced
The current research is done with an aim of analyzing how
the airlines is increasing the quality level of the services and which quality
management tools are used by the
airlines to quantify the quality level and to suggest new tools which
can be used to improve the quality level
However, the assessment of the quality and quality tools for
the Etihad airlines is quite tough in the face of difficulty in getting
information regarding the same and mostly secondary data sources have been
utilized for this assessment.
3. Key Quality Processes of Etihad Airlines
3.1 Pareto Diagram
To find out the primary sources of increasing or otherwise
level of flier issues and reduce the issues the Etihad’s quality managers use
the Pareto Chart. The construction of the pareto chart help to identify the
issues and defects that create the highest no of problem for the company. the
pareto chart for the Etihad airlines is shown below:
a)
As can be seen for the above diagram the most
pressing issues which is being faced by the Airline sin recent times is that of
baggage lost and misplaced. Customer complaints have been higher in this regard
b)
The other issues which have bene to have
larger frequency is that of lack of large space between seats in the economy
class and passengers flying long distances have been complaining of the same.
the lack of hygiene inside the flights over a long flight and bad smell has
bene frequently reported.
c)
All the three issues and other issues needs to
be tackled with care so that the fliers feel at home and feel comfortable.
3.2 Cause and Effect Diagram
The other control tool which is frequently used by the
Etihad airlines is that of the process control diagram or chart. The chart
displays the average no of defects on a weekly basis in the last 15 weeks and
the UCL and LCL limits. If the actual no of complaints has remained within the
UCL and LCL then the processes can be said to be within the limits and too much
actions is not warranted in that regard.
From the above chart the following have been
observed:
1.In all the 15 weeks under observation the actual
no of complaints raised have bene found to be within the upper control limit
and the lower control limits
2. Even if the Weekly limits are well within control
the no of defectives have shown a tendency to increased probable causes can be
identified through the cause and effect diagram preparation.
4. Analysis of the Quality Process - Etihad Airlines
New Quality tools suggested for Emirates Airlines
Cause & Effect Diagram
In all the 15 weeks under observation the actual no of
complaints raised have bene found to be within the upper control limit and the
lower control limits. Even if the Weekly limits are well within control the no
of defectives have shown a tendency to increased probable causes can be
identified through the cause and effect diagram preparation. Also because
complaints are higher in relation to baggage handling, hygiene inside the
aircraft in long flights the same shall be examined with the preparation of the
cause and effect diagram etc. the cause and effect diagram look like a fish and
called fish bone diagram and the same examines the process internal which is
sued to generate the results and thus causes which are causing the defects can
be analyzed
5. Qualitative recommendations in process
improvement of Etihad
Benchmarking
As the Etihad
airlines is a service provider the best tool which can be sued on a
organization wide is the tool of Benchmarking. Under benchmarking the Etihad’s
management would need to identify the process which would be benchmarked and
improved. Generally, the process which is falling behind and creating problem
would be the one which would be benchmarked. A no of processes can also be benchmarked.
Once the process is identified the manager involved would select aa industry
leading client for making the comparison and benchmarking teams would be formed
to undertake process evaluation and find the shortcomings through necessary
evaluation. The necessary changes would be recommended and processed by the
benchmarking team and it shall be made sure the process is benchmarked in the
future on a continuous basis as well to make sure it does not fall behind
against
6.Conclusion
From the analysis of the Etihad airlines quality
management process it has appeared prima facei that the Airline has been quite
successful in reducing waste in processes, trained the manpower adequately to
handle clients and fliers in a scientific way and reduce the sudden increase in
no of defects in various process. In none of the processes the no of complaints
has been higher than anticipated. However, being a global best practice
airlines the management aims to reduce the defect further and make the
processes more robust and productive
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