Planning and Control
On the basis of the above realization in regards to service provision, the British Airliner is credited for advancing trade, interaction and movement across various countries borders. Trade is one aspect that hugely depends on the free flow of both goods and human beings. Through the British carrier this has been a possibility. The other elements of interaction and movement have equally been boosted by the carrier. It can also be indicated that, the provision of employment is a service to the population. The aircraft cannot operate without the services of human capital. By recruiting people into their ranks, the company in a sense offers a service to the community.
The British Airways through its British Airways World Cargo lies in twelfth position in reference to cargo handling all over the world. The airliner also opened a cargo centre at the Heathrow Airport in 1990s to carry forward this service offer.
Inputs
Inputs are those substances or objects that are put into a process or entity with a view to generating some output. This is achieved through a process of transformation. As any other airliner, the British Airways inputs include pilots, planes, ground crew, passengers and freight data.
The airliner flies planes. These planes must be obtained through a purchasing act. People responsible for flying them are pilots who must also be recruited by the company. The ground crew is necessary as a team to guide events at the airport. Passengers form the bulk of the input as they travel across places. The collection of freight data is also a vital component that helps the company activities. It thus emerges that all those activities or objects that enter the organization are useful towards the running of the airliner and are the basic inputs.
Transformation
The transformation process is the way through which inputs are processed into outputs. The British Airways airliner does that through the selling of tickets, the flying of people, the transfer of materials from one place to another, the processing of information, and the scheduling of activities.
The airliner gets inputs and processes them. This is simply done through service provision. Through the sale of tickets, the company is simply transforming the tickets into money. This is done through the exchange of a ticket for money. Thereafter, the passengers that trade their money for a ticket get to travel. Other instances of transformation include collecting data, collating it and coming up with solutions concerning different issues.
Outputs
The main aim of introducing substances and objects into an entity or process is to give out a certain product. The products from inputs through a transformational process are known as outputs. The airliners output includes tickets sold, people, transported material, issued travel information etc. At this point, it is clear that outputs are a product of inputs. This is however possible only after undergoing an alteration through the transformation process. The transformation process serves as a bridge between the inputs and the outputs.
Planning and control
Planning and control form an important tenet in running of businesses. An airliner of high ranking as the British Airways must have been very sensitive and focused on this aspect if their success is a basis to go by. Planning and control, simply put, are ways of management in operations of an entity (Gregory and Martyn, 1996). This is an activity that is handled on a day to day basis due to its importance in an organization. It is on the basis of this realization that a critical view into the British Airways company is examined.
Planning refers to the theoretical end to an activity. On the other hand, control refers to the applied end to an activity. In a sense, planning is related to how an organization or business entity intends to achieve certain goals. This is done by making a decision on what to do and at what time to do it. Control follows up after a realization is made that something could not be going according to plan. Even if things are moving as anticipated, control could be useful in ensuring that indeed the set guidelines are put into use. So planning and control are tied at a certain point.
Constraints to planning and control
In any organization, the supply of resources is finite. At times there may also be physical constraints. A number of constraints include capacity, cost, time, and quality among others. It thus follows that an organization ought to be efficient in the management of its activities. The focus of this paper is on planning and control. Through the use of planning and control, the British Airways has been able to hit high performance levels in relation to service delivery. Due to the limited nature of resources, there is little room for poor planning and control of activities. In respect to this, the operations planning and control team of the British Airways has been effective and up to the task.
The reference to cost constraints is made as products and services have to be produced within a certain identified cost. Capacity constraints arise due to products and services being produced within a designed capacity limit that define operations. Timing constraints may also come up asproducts and services ought to be produced give a time frame so that the customer gets the intended value. Finally, quality constraints emerge as products and services match the premeditated tolerance restrictions of the service or product (Corke, 1986).
Operations control at the British Airways
As indicated earlier in this paper, the British Airways is among the largest and premier airliners in the world. On average, after every 90 seconds, a British Airways airliner takes off at a point somewhere in the world. As a result, the airliner has a task of planning their activities in relation to takeoff. That is to say that the airliner must schedule their flights. Failure to do so would spell harm to the airliner and its many users (Campbell and Duncan, 1986). In this regard, credit goes to the airliner as it has managed to consistently schedule this high number of flights all over the world.
The ability to handle these large scale operations is a pointer to the effective nature of planning and operations department of the British Airways. It takes great planning and control minds to achieve what the company has done over the years. In respect to this success story, it is discernable that the operations planning and control at the airliner has been unquestionable.
As shown earlier, the British airliner is headquartered at Heathrow in London. This is the busiest hub in the world. At this place, there is need to establish an important office in charge of operations. This office is to direct activities due to the complexities that accompany busy environments and large scale operations. This department is quite crucial. The British Airliner has its department at this location which is charged with handling of flights. This is supposed to be done seven days take off. On the other hand, initial flights are to be provided as earlier as in two years time. To add to this, the routes which the airliners ply their trade is supposed to be negotiated in six monthly periods world conference. To compound the whole scenario, the short flights that use the facility, airport, are only required to give a three days notice prior to take off or landing. In case a new route arises that is supposed to be used, it is the operations department that finds a way to accommodate this.
As such, the operations control department is in a serious tussle with these requirements for successful running of operations. As a pointer to this, the department can only make minor changes in a bid to cope with emergence situations that may arise during the take off period. Therefore, the department takes the responsibility of coordinating the major resources necessary to offer flights. These include scheduling, the crew and aircraft, they also manage the knock on effects that may be caused by delays, disruptions or shortages of inputs. The operations department is charged with the responsibility relating to all flights until they land. At this point is when other departments like, station control and engineering take over.
Table showing operations control
The regularity and the following punctuality by the flights serve as a basis of reviewing the performance of the operations control team. In this sense, regularity is viewed in relation to the proportion of flights that end up taking off as compared to the scheduled number. This is a crucial point as passengers would be upset if their flights are cancelled at an alarming rate. The current performance that stands at 99 percent indicates the efficacy of the operations control department. On the other hand, punctuality is a measure of timing in relation to take off. The British Airways is said to have set an internal regulation. This standard requires that a flight should take off as indicated by the schedule sheet. If the flight does not take off at the time scheduled then that constitutes lateness. On the basis of the airliner, a flight can be late, dead on time or early (Campbell and Duncan, 1986).
There are other components of operations control. They are the Operations Control Intelligence Centre and the Operations Control Centre and Emergency Procedures Information Centre. These are basically back-up centers. They are in charge of the unmanned areas. They were set up to deal with specific types of incidents at the airport. The members that serve in these centers are nominated. Before they can attain eligibility to be nominated, they must undergo training to conform to requirements. Following training, they are also taken through several exercises to ensure they are up to date on their task requirements.
The EPIC is supposed to be called into action if an airliner is involved in an accident at the place. The OCIC is only used when a serious accident of global magnitude is encountered. This may include war that would affect the entire airliner business. The most notable thing is that the membership of these two units is made up of experts with unquestionable training (Campbell and Smith, 1986).
This act of introducing crisis centers is of great help to the operations planning and control. It ensures that the other departments of the organizations are not sucked into crises. This promotes the normal operation of business as the crisis centers deal with any events that arise. Such a provision underlines the importance that the operations planning and control department attaches to the running of the company. This is a very positive indicator of high level preparedness towards addressing of paramount issues that relate to operations planning and control.
Planning and control activities
The planning and control activities include scheduling, loading, monitoring and control. Scheduling is the setting of timelines of doing activities, loading relates to cargo handling, monitoring is all about following how things are moving. Control is related to reining on how things happen in regards to running of operations in a business environment or any other entity.
On paper these tasks may appear to be simple. Contrary to that, it is a demanding task that needs to be carefully planed, handled and controlled if an organization of the high stature the British Airways enjoy is to be maintained. To maintain this, the operations planning and control takes credit for a work well executed.
Conclusion
The British Airways has achieved an unprecedented level of success. As this paper presents the case, the airliner has been in the business for quite a long time. All this time, the activities under the planning and control of the company have arisen over the time as the increasing world population has accompanied an increase in flight service provision. That not withstanding, the British Airways has been able to ably render its services to its entire clientele. On this basis, the position tat the operations planning and control of the airliner has been magnificent is held.
To argument the position, the demand for its services has been on the rise. A rise in demand for services may be subject to spurious events. That notwithstanding, the rise in demand may be in fact due to the nature of service provision by the airliner. In this regard, the paper finds out the operations planning and control at the British Airways has been exceptional. However, with further probing, areas that call for improvement do exist
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