Odyssey Business Consulting Pilot Angels Scheduling System Business Case

Odyssey Business Consulting Pilot Angels Scheduling System

Business Case

Executive Summary............................................................................. 3 Project Goals........................................................................................ 3 Pilot Angels Scheduling System (PASS):............................................4 Desired Areas of Impact......................................................................5 Desired Value of the project................................................................7 Alternatives.......................................................................................... 7 Analysis of Alternatives.......................................................................8 Required Funding and Support........................................................12

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Business Case

Executive Summary
Pilot Angels, a charitable service coordinated by Huskie Air, works with hospitals, healthcare organizations and organ banks to transport patients, medical personnel, supplies or donor organs wherever they are needed by partnering volunteer pilots. Currently Pilot Angels used a paper based manual system to track and schedule such requests which requires extensive effort to identify available volunteer pilots and appropriate planes many times ending up in inefficient use of time. The Pilot Angels Scheduling System (PASS) is an initiative to identify alternative solution to the current process and implement it successfully. The system will track the volunteer pilot information, plane information, customer information and service information towards making the scheduling more effective and easier.

Project Goals
The Pilot Angles envisions becoming a reliable provider of charitable transportation services in DeKalb area by increasing the number of patients served by 50% within 24 months, increasing schedule accuracy by 20% within 24 months, reducing stop-over to 3 for every 1000 flight miles within 12 months, reducing scheduling time to 2 hours from the time of request within 12 months and recognizing volunteer pilots who have contributed most amounts of their time and cost. Based on our research, there were four potential alternatives 1. Continue with the current system. 2. Purchase an ASP service. There are many ASPs providing services at reasonable price 3. Purchase packaged software. There are several alternatives available at various prices and functionalities and 4. Develop a customized flight planning system.

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Business Case

Based on the Total Cost of Ownership and Total Benefit of Ownership analysis, developing a customized flight planning and tracking system is recommended. This has high relevance to meet the organizational goals.

Introduction
Husky Air is a fixed base operator (FBO) providing a variety of aviation services in the Dekalb area. As an FBO, Husky Air provides: Business Jet, propjet, helicopter, and propeller aircraft charter, Aircraft rental Refueling Airframe, engine, propeller, and avionics maintenance Flight instruction Pilot supplies Pilot angels

Pilot Angels, a charitable service coordinated by Huskie Air, works with hospitals, healthcare organizations and organ banks to transport patients, medical personnel, supplies or donor organs wherever they are needed by partnering volunteer pilots. Patients being their primary customers, Pilot Angels serves by transporting them, their family, the medical personnel, supplies or donor organs the patient needs. The current system that Pilot Angels use to co-ordinate the service is a paper based manual system. The volunteer pilot information is currently stored in folder. When a request for transportation is placed the Huskie Air staff goes through the volunteer folder and calls the volunteers to find out who are available and puts together a flight route. The situation gets more complicated as the planes have different capacities and sometimes may not be able to accommodate the customer load. The system is very slow as it involves calling multiple volunteer pilots and also checks their planes load capacity. This has become an issue for Pilot Angels as a lot of personnel time is lost in phone calls and preparing a concrete schedule. This is a very crucial issue as Pilot Angels is striving to establish itself as a reliable charity service.

Pilot Angels Scheduling System (PASS):

Pilot Angels Scheduling System (PASS) is an initiative to evaluate the need for a new system and evaluate alternatives for the existing one. The main objective of this would be to evaluate alternatives and identify a replacement to the current system that will

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Business Case

provide for an effective way of tracking volunteer pilot information, their aircraft and the request for services from patients, hospitals, clinics and organ donors and also the flight service information. Through PASS, the goals of the organization will be achieved.

Desired Areas of Impact

The MOV table below lists the potential areas that this project will impact and summarizes the measurable organizational value of the PASS.

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Odyssey Business Consulting Pilot Angels Scheduling System

Business Case

Organizationa l Impact Strategic

Value Increase reliability and the brand image of Pilot Angels

Metric Reduce turn downs due to non availability of pilots from 35% to 20% Reduce schedule changes from 40% to 20% Reduce time to fly by 6 hours. Reduce no of stopovers per 1000 flight mile from 5 to 3. Reduce the average wait time between flights from 2 hours to an hour.

Time Frame 24 months

Customer

Reduce the scheduling time for each customer. Provide better schedule and less stopovers

12 months 12 months

12 months

12 months

Provide matching volunteers Financial Reduce personnel & communication cost of scheduling. Reduce total cost of scheduling Reduce the scheduling cycle time.

Operational

Social

Recognize specific pilots for their contribution. Increase the number of patients served.

Increase availability of matching volunteers from 40% to 60% Reduce personnel & communication cost of scheduling by 73%. Reduce total cost of scheduling by 59% Reduce scheduling time from 8 hours to 2 hours. Increase the accuracy of contribution recognition program to 95% Increase the number of patients served from 100 to 150

12 months 12 months

60 months 12 months

24 months 24 months

At an average the Pilot Angels serves about 100 patients per year. Pilot Angels want to move up the list of top charitable aviation transport services. Through PASS, Pilot Angels will be able to reduce the scheduling cycle time from 8 hours
Table 1 PASS - MOV to 2 hours within 12 months which will reduce the time- to-fly for the

customers by 6 hours, reduce the current personnel and communications cost by 73% in 12 months and the total scheduling cost by 59% in 5 years.

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Business Case

This will enable the Huskie staff to schedule flights effectively by reducing the stop-overs from around 5 to 3 for every 1000 flight miles and also reduce the time wait between flights from 2 hours to an hour. This will also increase match of volunteers and special customer requests to 60% within 12 months and increase the schedule accuracy by 20%. These combined with the effective recognition program to recognize contribution of the volunteer pilots (which also will attract more volunteer pilots) will increase the ability to fly more patients and there by reduce the turn downs due to non-availability of volunteers within 24 months.

Desired Value of the project

From the information we gathered and after careful analysis of the problem and opportunity, it is clear that this project will deliver better service and add value to the organization. The above figure illustrates how the MOV relates to the organizational goal of the Pilot Angels.

Alternatives

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Odyssey Business Consulting Pilot Angels Scheduling System

Business Case

Based on research conducted over the Internet OBC team identified the following four alternatives for the PASS. 1. Continue to use the current system. This will referred as Alt 1. 2. Utilize a packaged solution. Review of several scheduling solutions resulted in a clear choice of Flight Operation System (www.flightoperationsystem.com) which has the required functionalities. The system can be implemented in 2 ways a. ASP model: Under this Pilot Angels can purchase this service for $7,200/year for a limited use license and will require a little reprogramming to meet the requirements. Since this is a proprietary system the programming costs are at a premium of $55 per hour. All the server costs are taken by the service provider. This will be referred as Alt 2. b. Individual product model: Under this Pilot Angels can purchase the product and host them in their own environment. A lot of re-programming is required for customizing the system and implementing them. Since this is a proprietary system the programming costs are at a premium of $55 per hour. This will be referred to as Alt 3. 3. Develop a customized flight planning and tracking solution which meets all requirements satisfactorily and is also built with a scalable scope. The programming costs will be on a regular cost of $45 per hour since the skills required are relatively common. This will be referred to as Alt 4.

Analysis of Alternatives
The following section analyzes the alternatives Alt 1, Alt 2, Alt 3 and Alt 4 based on Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and Total Benefit of Ownership (TBO).

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Business Case

Total Cost of Ownership The following table analyzes the total cost of ownership for all the alternatives.
PASS - Total Cost of Ownership Description Alt 1 Alt2 8 hours of additional work 20,000.00 5,000.00 for every request@ $25.00 per hour 15 calls for every request@ 7,500.00 2,500.00 $5.00 per call Alt 2: Flight Operation 7,200.00 System ASP Subscription. Alt 3: Flight Operation System Alt 4: Database for Custom System Flight Operation System@ 1,650.00 $55/hr and custom system @ $45/hr 2 day onsite training @ 500/day Machine description (see footnote) 1,000.00 2,350.00i

Resource Personnel Time Communication Software

Alt 3 5,000.00 2,500.00 21,600.00

Alt 4 5,000.00 2,500.00 2,000.00

Programming

6,600.00

16,200.00

Training Hardware

1,000.00 4,000.00ii

1,000.00 4,000.00 Error: Referenc e source not found 750

Support & Maintenance

The subscription for FOS @ 1000 per year and the customized system @ 750 per year 27,500.00

1,000.00

1,000.00

Total Table 2 PASS - TCO

20,700.00

41,700.00

31,450.00

Alt 3 has the highest TCO while Alt 2 has the lowest TCO at the time of start up. Since these amounts are only a snapshot figures, it is essential to look at some future projection before the system is finalized. The table 3 lists yearly outflow for five years from each of the alternative. Note that from the years 2 onwards the no of patients served will increase from 100 to 150. It is evident that Pilot Angels was able to successfully co-ordinate the service with their manual system for an annual patient strength of 100. If the Pilot Angels have to serve more patients according to their organizational goal then they will have to go for one of the other alternatives to manage the process.
i ii

Basic Hardware: 2 Pentium 4 Dell Optiplex GX260 and Brother All in one FPSC. In addition to the Basic Hardware this includes a hosting server.

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PASS Out flow for 5 years Year 0 Alt1 Alt2 Alt3 Alt4 Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 41,250.00 19,450.00 12,250.00 12,000.00

27,500.00 27,500.00 41,250.00 41,250.00 20,700.00 15,700.00 19,450.00 19,450.00 41,700.00 31,450.00 8,500.00 12,250.00 12,250.00 8,250.00 12,000.00 12,000.00

Table 3 PASS Outflow for 5 Years

From table 3 it is evident that Alt 2 has the lowest start up cost. But its costs in subsequent years are consistently remaining high. But whereas Alt 3 and Alt 4 have relatively high start up cost but their yearly outflow in the subsequent years are significantly reduced. Table 4 summarizes the total costs incurred for each alternative at the end of the years 0, 3 and 5. From table 4 it can be found that though Alt 2 has the lowest start up cost its total cost is the highest at the end of year 5. Whereas Alt 4 has higher start up cost but on the long run offer significant savings than Alt 2. PASS Total Cost at the end of years Year 0 Alt1 Alt2 Alt3 Alt4 Year 3 Year 5 178,750.00 94,750.00 86,950.00 75,700.00

27,500.00 96,250.00 20,700.00 55,850.00 41,700.00 62,450.00 31,450.00 51,700.00

Table 4 - PASS total cost at the end of the years

Total Benefit of Ownership (TBO): In order to finalize the products the TBO is an effective tool. Table 5 lists the benefits required for PASS and rates alternatives which are weighted by their relevance to MOV.

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Odyssey Business Consulting Pilot Angels Scheduling System Weighted Alt1 Weighted Alt2

Business Case Weighted Alt3 Weighted Alt4

Benefits Functional Track Pilot information Track Plane information Track Pilot / Plane association Track customer information Track service information Match customer request Usability User friendly Availability Phone availability Scalability Ownership Security Weighted Benefits Table 5 PASS TBO

Weights

Alt1

Alt2

Alt3

Alt4

0.1

0.35

0.35

0.45

0.1

0.35

0.35

0.45

12.5

0.875

0.875

1.125

7.5

0.15

0.375

0.525

0.675

12.5

0.875

0.875

1.125

12.5

0.25

0.5

0.875

1.125

7 8 8 7 5 10 100

2 2 2 0 10 10

0.14 0.16 0.16 0 0.5 1 2.56

7 6 6 6 4 5

0.49 0.48 0.48 0.42 0.2 0.5 5.90

7 7 6 7 10 10

0.49 0.56 0.48 0.49 0.5 1 7.37

9 9 9 9 10 10

0.63 0.72 0.72 0.63 0.5 1 9.15

It can be found that Alt 4 has the highest benefit relevance to the MOV followed by Alt 3 and Alt 2. The effective alternative can be identified by comparing the TCO and the TBO scores. The following figures compare the TBO with the TCO at the end of 5 years, 3 years and at start up.

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5 Yrs Total Cost Benefit Analysis
200,000.00 150,000.00 Cost 100,000.00 50,000.00 0.00 0.00 Alt 1

Business Case

Alt 2

Alt 3 Alt 4

2.00

4.00

6.00

8.00

10.00

Weighted Benefits

3 Yrs Total Cost Benefit Analysis

125,000.00 100,000.00 75,000.00 Cost 50,000.00 25,000.00 0.00 0.00 Alt 1 Alt 3 Alt 2 Alt 4

2.00

4.00

6.00

8.00

10.00

Weighted Benefits

Start up Cost Benefit Analysis

50,000.00 40,000.00 30,000.00 Cost 20,000.00 10,000.00 0.00 0.00 Alt 1 Alt 4 Alt 2 Alt 3

2.00

4.00

6.00

8.00

10.00

Weighted Benefits

It can be found that Alt 4 has highest TBO score and has lesser TCO and is an ideal choice for PASS. These analysis indicates that Alt 4 has a high cost during start up in the long run proves cost effective than other alternatives.

Required Funding and Support

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Business Case

The start up investment for PASS is $ 31,450. This includes the development of the system, implementation and training. The support will be provided at the rate of $750 per year. Not-for-profit organizations will face difficulty in funding such projects out of their own budget. But several options are available to raise funding for the project. 1. Targeted fund raising can be done for contributions from partner organizations like hospitals, health care organizations, organ banks and individual contributions. 2. Partner with patient care or transportation organizations like Corporate Angels Network (CAN) or other Angel Flight organizations like Lifeline Pilots at Illinois. 3. Husky Air could fund some parts of the project since the system will significantly reduce their cost of service provided. Costs for hardware and some part of the system can come off their budget. 4. Submit the project proposal and apply for funding through some organizations like Johnson & Johnson Community Health Care Initiative to get some aid. http://www.jhsph.edu/johnsonandjohnson 5. Work together with the nationwide organizations like Air Care Alliance and AirLifeLine to provide better services. http://www.nffr.org/Airlifeline.htm http://www.aircareall.org/

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