Reference no: EM133392131

Task 1:

An airline at the Houston airport tried to please its passengers by always docking its planes at gates within a one to two-minute walk to the airport entrance and baggage claim and by having all the bags at the baggage claim area within 8 to 10 minutes. Unfortunately, the airline received many complaints about the time it took to get the bags to the baggage claim area. The airline researched the situation and found that there was virtually no way it could unload the bags to the transport trucks, drive to the unloading zone, and unload the bags any faster. The airline didn't change the baggage unloading procedure, but it did change another component of the arrival process and the complaints disappeared. The airline did not use mirrors to solve the problem as was the case for the slow elevators.

a) What was the real problem?

b) Suggest a number of things that you think the airline might have done to eliminate the complaints. Apply two or more problem-solving techniques.

TASK 2:

Employees of a certain department store are allowed to take merchandise out of the department store on approval. The original procedure required each employee to write an approval slip identifying the merchandise taken. Some employees are abusing the system by taking the clothing and destroying the slip, thereby leaving no record of the removed merchandise.

a) Apply one or more problem definition techniques to this situation.