Simultaneous service approach for reducing air passenger queue time

Simultaneous service offers service-oriented organizations, such as the air passenger transportation industry, the opportunity to differentiate themse lves by providing superior customer Service. The concept of simultaneous se rvice is analogous to the concept of simultaneous engineering. However, whi le simultaneous engineering strives to minimize product development time, s imultaneous service strives to minimize customer processing time. Overall c ustomer processing time is reduced by the identification and simultaneous a lignment of previously sequentially executed customer service activities. A simultaneous service approach was applied to the international ticketing c ounter at a major international airport. This involved developing both equi pment and operational policy alternatives to the normal sequencing of the t icketing and baggage check-in process. A total of five alternative simultan eous service approaches were investigated. Simulation analysis of these alt ernatives indicates that a 36% improvement in customer queue and servicing time was possible with this approach.