Baker Integrated Technologies
Streamlining Operations at American Airlines Crew Scheduling
makes communicating easy.
In
1991, American Airlines Crew Scheduling department moved into a new building
and began its search for a new system to streamline the department.
The Crew Scheduling department is comprised of 71 scheduling analysts, who are responsible for staffing 23,000 flights a day, with 33,000 crewmembers (including captains, pilots and flight attendants) located in ten crew bases.
At that time, each scheduling desk had a separate phone number. Scheduling analysts placed calls to flight crewmembers to fill vacancies on upcoming flights. Every time crewmembers received one of these calls, they had to return the call to a different phone number. Often, the line was busy, and they had to call back several times before they could get through to the scheduling analyst. Sometimes they would be on hold as long as fifteen minutes, as the scheduling analyst tried to manage a workload that was often overwhelming. There was no way to manage workload or to shift calls from one station to another. Calls had to be accepted in the order in which they were received. Too often, that meant that the scheduling analyst had to take calls for the person that sat at their desk yesterday, and calls for flight attendants requesting their schedule for the coming month, before getting to the call they really wanted to take - the first officer who could fill the vacancy on the flight that was supposed to have left 20 minutes ago. Vacancies were filled without regard to an employee's current schedule.
Plans to streamline the center included finding a system where the workload could be analyzed, distributed, and redistributed on the fly. They wanted to simplify with only one phone number for crewmembers to call for all scheduling needs. They wanted to be able to play music on hold, and play custom advisory messages to each group of callers. They wanted to fill vacancies with an employee's current schedule in mind. Their previous system was obsolete and needed to be replaced before Y2K. Their goals were to reduce the number of crew-related delays and to find the most economical crewmember to fill the vacancy, in accordance with union rules.
They first decided to use Edify's interactive voice response system (IVR), since other American Airlines departments already had it in use. The Edify IVR is the first system encountered by the crewmembers when calling in; it prompts them for touchtone information, such as their employee number and crew base. The Edify system is interfaced with American Airlines' existing Oracle database, which holds additional information about each crewmember. The next step was to find a communications system capable of displaying this information and queuing incoming calls based on the information retrieved for each crewmember.
The search went on for years, but finally was narrowed down to three vendors: Lucent, Siemens, and Baker Integrated Technologies of Norcross, GA. Baker was chosen in 1995. "Baker was the least expensive, however, that is not the reason we chose Baker," said David Kerr, project coordinator for crew scheduling. Baker basically had the only system capable of meeting all of our requirements. We also liked the fact that the core product, DISPATCHWorks®, was already in use at similar operations. We've heard good things about Baker from the references we checked."
As an applications platform, DISPATCHWorks®, allows for the development of custom applications to meet each customer's specific needs. A custom application was developed for Crew Scheduling, which resulted in the release of a new feature for DISPATCHWorks® called QUEUEView, now popular in the Public Safety market.
The solution includes 144 telephone lines that are routed through their Nortel DMS 100 switch. Additionally, Eyretel's voice recording system is integrated into the application to allow for the recording of specific types of calls while not recording other calls. Sabre was hired to program the Edify IVR and to perform the queries for the traffic logging that it accepts from Baker's DISPATCHWorks® program.
Here is how it works: the caller dials the crew scheduling phone number. The IVR answers the call and prompts the caller to enter information such as their employee number, crew base, and reason for the call. Two-thirds of the callers are able to retrieve the information they need through voice prompts from the IVR. For those that need to speak with an analyst, a prompt is provided to allow them to be transferred to the appropriate analyst. Meanwhile, the IVR has retrieved a record of information about the crewmember and has stored this information in a temporary database that now includes a distinct record number. When a call is transferred from the IVR to DISPATCHWorks®, the IVR passes the distinct record number on to DISPATCHWorks®, which uses the record number to retrieve the record from the temporary database. Each crewmember record includes up to 22 fields of data, any of which may be used as criteria for the classification and queuing of the call. Each scheduling analyst sets up filters based on these fields of data so they are able to receive calls for their assigned flight vacancies. For example, after calling every flight attendant based out of Dallas, they can filter to only receive calls from Dallas flight attendants who are available to work a particular flight. If calls do not fit into anyone's call filters, they are passed to the shift manager. Scheduling analysts are also able to assign priorities, so that if a certain person calls in, they are automatically placed at the top of the queue. Each month, over 100,000 calls are processed through DISPATCHWorks®.
Laird Smay, vice president of sales and marketing for Baker Integrated Technologies, says, "As an applications platform, DISPATCHWorks® is capable of interfacing with a variety of systems and integrating information from these systems into an effective call processing system that addresses the specific needs of American Airlines. This is truly an example of the power and flexibility of DISPATCHWorks®."
"Baker has helped us to achieve our goals of reducing the number of crew-related delays and cancellations. It has also helped us to assign the most economical crew member, as outlined in our contractual and labor agreements," said Kerr. This is thanks in part to the ability of the scheduling analyst to search through the information on each caller, as it is displayed on the DISPATCHWorks® screen, and select which call he wants to take, instead of being forced to accept the next call.
Kerr also likes some of the standard features of DISPATCHWorks®, such as personal phone books, personal extensions attached to a user's login, and conference calls. "The conference call feature is great. If I have a captain, a first officer, number one flight attendant, and number four flight attendant all in my call queue, why would I want to talk to them all separately, when I can drag them all into one conversation and tell all four of them the same information at the exact same time? Very nice."
"Baker's solution has allowed us to adhere to union rules regarding staffing, particularly the '100 hours before the month starts' rule for flight attendants," said Kerr. "They receive a certain bid line and call 100 hours before the month starts to fill up their schedule for the coming month. Well, at 8:00 P.M. Central time, we have every flight attendant based at our two largest crew bases, Dallas and Chicago, call in at the exact same time. We have a limited resource of the number of phone lines we have here - it's 144 phone lines. I just finished twelve months of data; in that time, only once did we hit that threshold, and it was during one of those '100 hours before the month starts.' It occurred for three minutes from November 27, 1999 from 20:01 to 20:04. That is another feature we like about DISPATCHWorks®: calls can be bumped when the call volume reaches its capacity. The bumping is where we take the largest subject matter, and terminate the newest call to that subject line. The caller hears a nice little recording that says, 'Due to call volume, we will need you to call back later,' then the line is released. The system keeps the old calls in the queue. The bumping is extremely important for when we exceed our capacity - and we have a big capacity. The reason being, that if I have another crewmember calling in for an operational need right now, they can still get through. Likewise, if I pick up the phone and I need to make an outbound phone call, I still have a line available to make that outbound call."
Baker's reporting feature has helped Kerr to manage workflow. The system keeps a record of all outbound calls, which includes the employee's number, time stamp, number dialed, and length of call. Reports can be run on outbound calls, incoming call queues, and a variety of other topics. In addition, "We can shift workload from one desk to another on the fly," said Kerr. "If I have three responsibilities, and one is bogging me down, I can send one of my call queues to a coworker."
Employees like DISPATCHWorks® because it allows them to customize their screen, set up multiple clocks to notify them of upcoming deadlines, and set up custom filters. With the beehive notification light, they can see if there is activity going on at their desk from across the room. (A beehive is a series of colored lights that illuminate if a call is ringing or on hold.) There is also a panic button that flashes a light on their beehive, to request help from managers or coworkers.
"Baker's service has been excellent," reports Kerr. "There are a lot of things that can go wrong, since many systems are involved in the total solution, and yet the Baker technician pinpoints the problem and fixes it, in collaboration with other vendors."
American Airlines Crew Scheduling plans to grow with Baker into the future. Kerr is looking at the possibilities of allowing ill, injured, and disabled employees to use the system from home. In addition, they are considering allowing reserve employees to work from their residence or from a satellite location.
Copyright 2001 Baker Integrated Technologies, LLC. All rights reserved. Site updated 2/19/01.
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