Tuesday, July 5, 2011

We Need To Know When Something Does Not Happen

An event is anything that happens. A business event is an event that has a meaning to conduct commercial activities. Examples at the airport include a passenger checking in, a runway closure, a change in the ATC acceptance rate, an aircraft touchdown, aircraft doors closing, and a failure in the baggage sorting system. Events small and large take place all day, every day in every corner of a company and its environment.

A fundamental characteristics of events is that they cannot be entirley foreseen. Some events require actions as a direct response, for instance when the runway visibilty drops under a specific threshold. Other events are opportunities that can be exploited. For example, when a flight is cancelled, the stranded passengers could be directed to a desk which requires walking through a shopping area.



Now, an event is "something that happens" which is fine but raises the question of what to do when something which is expected to happen does not happen. For example, aircraft boarding should start 35 minutes prior to off-blocks. For this we need to know the expected boarding time based on standards, we need the latest departure time (planned or estimated) and we need to know the current status of the flight. We need to monitor this all the time. And, we must make sure that we are not getting an alert every second in the event, that boarding has not started on time. Why do we need to know this information at all? Because a late boarding is a very good indicator for a late departure.

This is just one example of time-based or timed-out events. You may want to build this and other features on top of legacy operational systems or you may want to use our brilliant and proven real-time processing system to handle this for you for all systems, every day, all the time.

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

3 Reasons Why Airport Operators Are Not Customer Oriented

All what passengers want is good service, including less delays and less lost bags. They do not care who owns or runs the airport. Though there is a lot of discussion about passenger experience there are a few reasons why airports are not customer focussed.

Here are the top three:



1. Airport Operators do not know who their customer is. There was this Airport Operator who had an executive meeting to kick-off their Balanced Scorecard process. The goal of the first workshop was to define the Balanced Scorecard. After a day's discussion they had to abort the meeting, because they could not agree on who their customer was. Airline or passenger? Or even retailer, or visitor? They all deliver revenue.

2. Airport Operators lack competition. In another post I was highlighting the fact that for local passengers there is no real competition between airports. Suppose you live and work in Zurich. Would you choose Munich or Geneva as your home airport because you encountered bad service at Zurich Airport? Not really.

3. Airport Operators do not think short-term. Airport Operators are a different species if you look at all the other stakeholders at the airport. Airlines, ground handlers, retailers, they all have to move quickly to consistently win their customers. They face high variable cost while Airport Operators are investment driven with high fix cost. Airport Operators think in master plans and capex and do not look at current customer (who is it?) needs. Not in the short term.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Refresh Rates for Visualization of Real-Time Data

What's your expectation of refresh rate for "real time" data visualization? One could argue that the refresh rate depends on the time when such real-time information is still actionable, i.e. you can still take an action to avoid an issue or to ensure an expected result. This goes beyond traditional dashboards which are being refreshed in intervals. You will have to be notified immediately when something goes wrong or when something did not happen in due time.


That may be a reason why the demand for refresh rates ranges from zero latency to hourly refresh. I would aim for zero latency. Because, as a user, I do not want to ask myself whether this information is up to date. Nor will I want to know when it is being refreshed. In a real-time / operational environment it must be up to date.