Jim SinurOnce in a while the BPM analysts actually get to hear a presentation from at the Gartner BPM conference. Last week in London, we had our fifth EMEA BPM conference (See http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2010/03/02/london-bpm-conference-a-hit-get-ready-las-vegas/ ). I heard a case study on the management of flights at Heathrow airport that really shows the way of the future for BPM run processes (Presentation: U3 – Westbourne 3, Level -1 – End-User Case Study: Presentation Title: Heathrow An Event Driven Airport). I was impressed to say the least.
![MPj04000380000[1]](http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/files/2010/03/WindowsLiveWriterBPMRunsHeathrowAirport_84EFMPj040003800001_2.jpg)
The Problem:
Heathrow airport is limited in size, but it must take on a significant increase in air traffic over the next decade, while maintaining its key positions as one of the busiest hubs in the Euro air space. A problem in Heathrow has a tremendous ripple effect throughout Europe. On top of that, we know what the UK weather can do to complicate air traffic problems. To make life even more miserable, the air management folks were only getting 10 minutes notification, on average of airplanes entering the airspace of Heathrow. Imagine the mess on the ground queuing all these airplanes. . .
The Solution:
Heathrow was creative in solving this multi-faceted dilemma with the aid of BPM. First BPM linked to the Euro Air Space system to increase the lead time to over 30 minutes. Second a BAM and event driven approach was linked together to manage the deployment of crews and the start of subservient processes like dynamic gate assignment, air tarmac docking and undocking crews, refueling, cleaning, baggage crews, catering, gate workers etc. The BAM is highly visual and depicts planes in the process of landing, being serviced and taking off optimizing on turnaround time within the context of the state of the airport holistically. There are multiple, dynamic and automated scenarios that change the rules for running the dynamic processes. There are scenarios for excellent, good, bad and really bad. The airport is instrumented to respond by slowing down security and keeping people in the retail shops longer without pressuring the gate workers. The benefits of optimal airplane turnaround are large, but this project pays for itself in higher retail revenue (shared). What a balance (more revenue in worse scenarios and great operational efficiency in good scenarios).
The Excitement:
This case study shows operational success with combining scenario planning, complex events, BPM, BAM and rule driven processes in a goal driven manner. This is using BPM for business advantage across many stove pipe processes. This process is at the highest level of BPM maturity (not to say that it can’t improve over time). . It saves fuel to boot 
Category: BPM Business Process Improvement Business Rules Green Optimization Simulation Tags: BPM, Business Rules, Green, Optimization, Simulation
10 responses so far ↓
1 uberVU - social comments March 10, 2010 at 6:45 pm
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by JimSinur: Is This BPM at it’s Best? http://bit.ly/cmMtpU #BPM #BRMS #entarch #Gartner #IT…
2 Rashid Khan March 11, 2010 at 8:55 am
Every time I fly through Heathrow, the experience at the airport is very bad. There are long queues of peope waiting to go through security. Even at the new multi-billion dollar Terminal 5 the queues run around in circles, up and down stairs, and sometimes even outside the terminal! In BPM terms, or more specifcally in Lombardi’s terms, there are “red hot spots” all over! The place is always chaotic. And many other frequent travelers I know have the same complaint about Heathrow.
I know you are a big fan of modeling and simulation, and often write and talk about it. Look at the information availabe to the airport management:
1. They know exactly when every flight is arriving.
2. They know how many people are in every flight
3. They know where all these people will have to go (which terminal)
This is one of the few examples where so much information is availabe for some good simulation and predictions. Despite having all this information, all the BAM and BPM that you are impressed with, and presumably some good BI capailities, they cannot seem to smooth the flow of their customers through security and from one place to another.
OK I grant you the fact that they probably have very good systems to manage their planes. But I hope they would really show their great stuff by pleasing their customers.
3 Jim Sinur March 11, 2010 at 9:01 am
Rashid,
You bring up a great point. I’m not sure the airport is considering the experience of the customer in their mix. This is where BPM needs to move next. My experience a HEathrow has actually improved over the years, but I might be the isolated exception.
Jim
4 Russell Keziere March 11, 2010 at 2:02 pm
I respect Rashid’s experiences. I was at the presentation too and the case study showed an improvement of on-time departure rate of 68% improved to 83%, and LHR has improved to 4th best rank in the world up from the bottom. — so that shows the improvements are happening.
5 Alberto Manuel March 16, 2010 at 5:49 am
Hello Jim:
I think this post is related to this article http://www.thestandard.com/news/2010/03/02/heathrow-saves-30-million-business-process-management
My experience in airport management tells me that without knowing the details of the project, it seems to me that this a marketing press release.
There is no airport system that “detects” terrorism alert. This kind of info on runs closed loop. It must be inserted manually in the system.
I can hardly believe that it exceeds commercial of-the-self software.
We are talking about algorithms that have been developed and optimized for over five decades. We’re talking about real-time simultaneous connection of: infrastructure airport management; tenants and air traffic management in real time. Implementation of these types of systems must be approved by the airport safety and security boards regarding risk management issues.
The information available does not clarify a lot of things, thus I remain very sceptical about this kind of announcements.
If there are more references on the subject share it please.
Regards
6 eamonn cheverton March 16, 2010 at 9:02 am
Rashid,
Sorry to disappoint you but the 3 points you make are just not true especially from north american carriers who are not part of IATA. Lastly, everything we do is based on the customer experience. I do not wish to get in a discussion here but the points you make are not true and not very helpful. This is supposed to be about event driven BPMS and not a forum to have cheap shots at Heathrow.
Eamonn
Enterprise Architect Heathrow & EU SESAR project
7 David Picard March 16, 2010 at 7:59 pm
I have to agree with Alberto on this having built ground and flight operations solutions in the mid-late 90s for several airlines. There are numerous factors that drive departure order on aircraft to include status on crew and passenger connections as well as departure slots for the airlines and maintenance scheduling. Most of this information is internal to the airlines and is not published outside the flight operations center. Departure order drives gate assignment, in combination with passenger connections with more optimal solutions. The best solutions improve the passenger experience by optimizing gate assignment to reduce connecting passenger travel time in the terminals.
I’m hoping Jim can comment a little on the visualizations in the solutions as I have not seen it myself. The prepackaged solutions I built in the late 90s had visual maps of the terminal gates, taxiways and remote gates and tracked the aircraft position at the airports in real time using the onboard GPS feeds from each aircraft.
While fuel consumption can be reduced to some extent leveraging ground operations solutions, most savings are realized through flight plan optimization and schedule tweaks to reduce the fuel burn coming in to the destination airport to fit the traffic profile.
We were able to achieve on-time percentages above 98% from a starting on-time percentage in the mid-70s for a major US carrier with prepackaged solutions that integrated flight and ground operations considering the above factors. While the claimed improvement with a ground operations centric solution represents a significant improvement, it cannot approach 98% without integrating flight operations factors into the planning.
8 The Process Ninja March 17, 2010 at 8:17 pm
Eammon – got quite excited when I read your comment regarding “everything we do is based on the customer experience” – has Heathrow airport gone “outside-in”?
9 Ashish Bhagwat March 19, 2010 at 10:06 pm
Jim,
This only goes to show that the real BPM solutions are the ones that actually cross over and leverage the supporting technologies around BPM (CEP, BAM, BRE, SOA, and so on). Sometimes, we, in BPM community, seem to make a huge deal about the way business users are using the process models, how much role a central orchestration engine is playing and so on. What matters is whether the problem is actually solved and differences experienced by the impacted participants of the process.
I make a similar point in my blog on convergence in BPM ecosystem (http://wp.me/pN8i1-30) and also illustrating the fact that BPM solutions are incomplete without these converging technologies. In a true BPM ecosystem, we ought to have a solution that addresses the customer scenario or the problem with the best combination of BPM (& supporting) technologies possible.
- Ashish
http://ashishbhagwat.wordpress.com/
10 How important is it to qualify an opportunity or solution as BPM? « The Eclectic Zone March 19, 2010 at 11:51 pm
[...] How important is it to qualify an opportunity or solution as BPM? March 20, 2010 Ashish Bhagwat Leave a comment Go to comments I read with immense interest, the point made by Theo on how salesforce.com fluked the BPM model right and Jim’s post on Heathrow airport case study. [...]