Considering improvements to its basic passenger flow

Assignment Help Operation Management

Reference no: EM132209716

Sandpiper Airlines is considering improvements to its basic passenger flow at its airport locations. The process being considered is a very simple one having only three main activities of baggage check, security check, and gate check-in. Based on previous data collected by the airlines, they expect the passengers to arrive (at their high volume airports) according to an exponential distribution with a mean arrival rate of 50 passengers per hour (you will need to convert to interarrival times). The passengers enter a single queue at the baggage check-in counter on a FIFO basis. The length of baggage activity is assumed to be Normal with a mean service time of 5.5 minutes and a standard deviation of 1.0 minutes.

Following check-in, the passengers walk to the security check area. The walk is very short and can be assumed to be a constant 1 minute walk in your model. Security has only one line requiring a dedicated security agent. Each passenger requires an average of 3 minutes with a 0.5 minute standard deviation according to a normal distribution. Passengers enter through a single entry point and are held in a single queue until processed. Due to space restrictions, no additional lines can be added.

Approximately 20% of the passengers require an additional screening (according to Homeland Security Rules) at a separate location requiring an additional 5 to 7 minutes, uniformly distributed. Those passengers chosen for detailed inspection are pointed to a second security area where a special agent checks the individual and their carry-on baggage. The time to get to and from the detailed inspection area can be neglected.

Following security, the passengers walk to the gate area. The walk to the gate area is a fairly long one and is variable since some passengers walk at different speeds and some may even stop to shop along the way. The walk time is known to be normally distributed with a mean of 8.9 minutes and a standard deviation of 5.0 minutes.

Address the following questions after building your model:

Assuming that all passengers enter a single queue line at the baggage check-in counter, recommend your BEST:

a) Number of baggage checkers needed

b) Number of security officers needed (for both types of stations)

c) Number of screeners needed

d) Average total throughput (total time) of passengers

e) Number of passengers thru in 100 hours

f) Utilizations of baggage checkers, security officers, and screeners

g) Your final observations and conclusions

The airline’s objective is an average throughput time of less than 22 minutes total average passenger time from arrival at baggage check-in to the gate. This will require running the simulation multiple times and finding the best combination. Be sure to justify your recommendations. Run each simulation for 100 hours. The airlines will not approve any system that causes its passengers to wait for more than 10 minutes on average in any line/queue. Obviously, the airlines would like to minimize the number of employees needed (baggage plus security). You may need to increase the number of employees (resources) to keep the number of system entities under 150. The Arena output should be a Category Overview Report.

Reference no: EM132209716

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