The Role of Information Technology in the Airport Business: A Retail-Weighted Resource Management Approach for Capacity-Constrained Airports
Much research has been undertaken to gain insight into business alignment of IT. Thisalignment basically aims to improve a firm’s performance by an improvedharmonization of the business function and the IT function within a firm. The thesisdiscusses previous approaches and constructs an overall framework, which a potentialapproach needs to fit in.Being in a highly regulated industry, for airports there is little space left to increaserevenues. However, the retailing business has proven to be an area that may contributetowards higher income for airport operators. Consequently, airport management shouldfocus on supporting this business segment. Nevertheless, it needs to be taken intoaccount that smooth airport operations are a precondition for successful retailingbusiness at an airport.Applying the concept of information intensity, the processes of gate allocation andairport retailing have been determined to appraise the potential that may be realizedupon (improved) synchronization of the two. It has been found that the lever is largestin the planning phase (i.e. prior to operations), and thus support by means ofinformation technology (for information distribution and improved planning) may helpto enable an improved overall retail performance.In order to determine potential variables, which might influence the output, a processdecomposition has been conducted along with the development of an appropriateinformation model.The derived research model has been tested in different scenarios. For this purpose anadequate gate allocation algorithm has been developed and implemented in a purposewrittenpiece of software. To calibrate the model, actual data (several hundred thousanddata items from Frankfurt Airport) from two flight plan seasons has been used.Key findings: The results show that under the conditions described it seems feasible toincrease retail sales in the magnitude of 9% to 21%. The most influential factors(besides the constraining rule set and a retail area’s specific performance) proved to be aflight’s minimum and maximum time at a gate as well as its buffer time at gate.However, as some of the preconditions may not be accepted by airport management ornational regulators, the results may be taken as an indication for cost incurred, in casethe suggested approach is not considered.The transferability to other airport business models and limitations of the researchapproach are discussed at the end along with suggestions for future areas of research.
Year of publication: |
2009
|
---|---|
Authors: | Klann, Dirk |
Other Persons: | Pagliari, R. (contributor) |
Publisher: |
Cranfield University |
Subject: | gate assignment problem | retail sales | algorithm | combinatorial explosion | business process engineering | information intensity | data model | simulation framework |
Saved in:
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