Akanksha Ghoderao

Operations Management

2k181021

ERP assignment - Case study on Southwest Airlines

1. Why is parts inventory management so important at Southwest Airlines? What

business processes are affected by the airline’s ability or inability to have required
parts on hand?

Ans. Southwest Airlines, company is the largest low-fare, high frequency, point-to-point airline
in the world, and largest overall measured by number of passengers per year. Founded in 1971
with four planes serving three cities, the company now operates over 500 aircraft in 68 cities,
and has revenues of $10.1 billion. Southwest has the best customer service record among major
airlines, the lowest cost structure, and the lowest and simplest fares.

The Southwest airlines are one of the very high profile airlines, with over 500 aircraft in the
world. I think in order to maintain and to keep their good reputation Southwest must be able to
keep available supplies and extra inventory in stock and readily available. The company needs a
strategic plan to manage this process on a daily basis to insure that all supplies are on hand. The
long term, cost effective way to solve that problem was to increase productivity through the use
of right application software.

2. How did implementing the i2 software change the way Southwest ran its business?

Ans. I2 Technologies a leading supply chain management, it also demand planner improves
Southwest's forecasts for all the part location combinations in its system, and provides better
visibility into demand for each part. It optimizes to overhaul its supply chain management and
data visibility.

I2 Service parts planner helps Southwest replenish its store of parts and ensures, The I2 Service
Budget Optimizer helps Southwest use its historical data of parts usage to generate forecast of
the future parts usage.

I think I2 make them better and ran better than before.

3. Describe two decisions that were improved by implementing the i2 system?

Ans.

 It optimizer to overhaul its supply chain management and data visibility

 It also demands planner to improve Southwest's forecasts for all the part location
combinations in its system, and provides better visibility into demand for each part.