Steakhouses, a chain in San Francisco, Atlanta, and Chicago, lets customers choose

ingredients for their sandwiches using an iPad on the table. Diners also get a great photo of the
menu item (which stimulates sales), a list of ingredients and nutritional information (a plus for
those with allergies or watching their diet), and an opportunity to build their own meal.
Some restaurants, in addition to having the enticing photo of the meal, find that they can
add a description and photo of just what a medium-rare steak looks like. They can further
enrich the dining experience by adding a “recipe” tab or “history” tab with descriptions of the
item’s origins and tradition. They finds the tabs great for its lengthy wine lists. Others program
the system to remember the guest’s meal preferences. And some customers love the ability to
order immediately, scan coupons, and swipe credit cards at the table. The instantaneous
placement of the order to the kitchen is a significant advantage for those restaurants pursuing a
response strategy.
Using iPads means developing a new process. iPads are not cheap, but they are accurate
and fast, with lots of options. Restaurants using the new process find customer retention,
frequency of visits, and average check size all increasing.
Supply Chain in Fast Fashion
Inditex (Zara) has proved that an efficient supply chain management process is key to
success in Fast Fashion. Inditex, founded in 1963, now has more than 6.900 stores around the
world, and a total revenue in excess of €18.12 billion (FY 2014). Inditex has its primary
warehouse in La Coruna, Spain, where goods are distributed to the retail outlets twice a week.
Proximate outlets are served by trucks, and more remote outlets by aircrafts, making sure all
stores are able to provide the same fashion garments to their customers at the same time. To
ensure an optimal supply chain, Inditex controls the manufacturing and supply processes to a
higher degree than most of its competitors in the retail area.
Inditex works thoroughly with JIT (Just in Time) principles, and has reserved 85 percent of
the production capacity for in-season adjustments, ensuring optimal flexibility regarding
quantity and sizes in demand, with the upshot
That Inditex can replenish items in as little as two weeks. In the production departments
they work with built-in slack, making sure that sudden changes in demand can be met by
opening up more time slots in production.
One of the most important implications of the JIT concept is that it minimizes inventories
and therefore items that need to be sold at discount. This is significant especially in fast
fashion,where large inventories not being sold at full price, lead to poor financial results.
Inditex spends a bit more on the supply chain (eg. paying higher wages to workers in Spain
instead of Bangladesh the production facilities) and saves a lot more by selling more of its
output at full price.

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Alaska Airlines: 20-Minute Baggage Process—Guaranteed!
Alaska Airlines is unique among the nine major U.S. carriers not only for its extensive
flight coverage of remote towns throughout Alaska (it also covers the U.S., Hawaii, and
Mexico from its primary hub in Seattle). It is also one of the smallest independent airlines,
with 10,300 employees, including 3,000 flight attendants and 1,500 pilots. What makes it
really unique, though, is its ability to build state-of-the-art processes, using the latest
technology, that yield high customer satisfaction. Indeed, J. D. Power and Associates has
ranked Alaska Airlines highest in North America for seven years in a row for customer
satisfaction. Alaska Airlines was the first to sell tickets via the Internet, first to offer Web
check-in and print boarding passes online, and first with kiosk check-in. As Wayne Newton,
Director of System Operation Control, states, “We are passionate about our processes. If it’s
not measured, it’s not managed.”
One of the processes Alaska is most proud of is its baggage handling system. Passengers
can check in at kiosks, tag their own bags with bar code stickers, and deliver them to a
customer service agent at the carousel, which carries the bags through the vast underground
system that eventually delivers the bags to a baggage handler. En route, each bag passes
through TSA automated screening and is manually opened or inspected if it appears
suspicious. With the help of bar code readers, conveyer belts automatically sort and transfer
bags to their location (called a “pier”) at the tarmac level. A baggage handler then loads the
bags onto a cart and takes it to the plane for loading by the ramp team waiting inside the cargo
hold. There are different procedures for “hot bags” (bags that have
less than 30 minutes between transfer) and for “cold bags” (bags
with over 60 minutes between plane transfers). Hot bags are delivered directly from one plane
to another (called “tail-to-tail”). Cold bags are sent back into the normal conveyer system. The
process continues on the destination side with Alaska’s unique guarantee that customer
luggage will be delivered to the terminal’s carousel within 20 minutes of the plane’s arrival at
the gate. If not, Alaska grants each passenger a 2,000 frequent-flier
mile bonus! The airline’s use of technology includes bar code scanners to check in the bag
when a passenger arrives, and again before it is placed on the cart to the plane. Similarly, on
arrival, the time the passenger door opens is electronically noted and bags are again scanned as
they are placed on the baggage carousel at the destination—tracking this metric means that the
“time to carousel” (TTC) deadline is seldom missed. And the process almost guarantees that
the lost bag rate approaches zero. On a recent day, only one out of 100 flights missed the TTC
mark. The baggage process relies not just on technology, though. There are detailed,
documented procedures to ensure that bags hit the 20-minute timeframe. Within one minute of
the plane door opening at the
gate, baggage handlers must begin the unloading. The first bag must be out of the plane within
three minutes of parking the plane. This means the ground crew must be in the proper location
—with their trucks and ramps in place and ready to go. Largely because of technology, flying
on Alaska Airlines is remarkably reliable—even in the dead of an Alaska winter with only two
hours of daylight, 50 mph winds, slippery runways, and low visibility. Alaska Airlines has had
the industry’s best on-time performance, with 87% if its flights landing on time.

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Discussion Questions*
1. As Steakhouse’s new assistant, you need to flowchart the general process of the
restaurant. What are advantages and disadvantages of the process?
2. Prepare a flowchart of Zara’s production and sale process, based on the above
information. What are advantages and disadvantages of the process?
3. Prepare a flowchart of the process a passenger’s bag follows from kiosk to destination
carousel. Include the exception process for the TSA opening of selected bags.
4. What other processes can an airline examine? Why is each important?