Using Lean Sigma to Improve your

Airport Experience

Audience
Persons new to Lean and Six Sigma, Champions and Mentors.
Author
James O. Pearson is a Quality and Business Management Consultant
with over 30 years industry experience. He has guided Quality and
Business Process Improvement leading to sustainable operational
improvement and Organizational Change leveraging Lean Sigma
Methodologies.

Abstract

Everyone makes trips to the airport. Everyone knows there are good times and bad times to make the trip. This
article applies Lean and Six Sigma tools to this almost universal experience and provides a simple primer of
how Lean Sigma can be applied to almost any situation.

Copyright 2009 JO Pearson Consulting. All rights reserved.

THE INFORMATION IN THIS PUBLICATION IS PROVIDED AS IS. WE MAKE NO
REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND WITH RESPECT TO THE INFORMATION
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My Airport Experience
We have all had to plan a trip to the airport. Sometimes it goes well and sometimes not so well. One of the
problems we have is dealing with the variation in the trip time to the airport. Since I travel to the airport a
lot, and like analyzing data, I keep track of my travel time to the airport. And living in Boston has always
been an adventure when going to the airport.
Our question today (or our problem statement) is simple:
How much time should I allow for my trip to the airport so I dont miss my plane?
Here is a run chart (data over a time period) that shows my trips to the airport over time. The time shown
below is my total trip time in minutes- from leaving the house until completing the security check in the
airport. Note that I have made 58 trips to the airport and that my average time to get there is 93 minutes.

Based on the data above, what happens if I always plan to take 93 minutes (the average) to the airport?
Youre right; I miss a lot of flights! But how much time should I plan for so that I can make my flight and
not waste a lot of time sitting at the airport? Lets apply Lean and Six Sigma to help answer the problem.
Dont be surprised at our answers - you know more about Lean and Six Sigma than you may suspect!

Applying Lean
Lean is a structured methodology to document a process with a high level of detail and then drive
improvement in time and quality. Lean is also used to understand the workplace layout. There is a rich
set of Tools and methods (e.g. 5S, Kaizen, Value Stream, Kanban) to manage time, waste, yield and queue
time. By first documenting the process and then leaning it out, you can achieve major process
improvements. So lets Lean out our Airport trip!
Here are some details about my trips to the airport:
Step

Process Description

1
2
3

Start Car and Warm up

Travel to highway
Pay Toll

Time for Activity

Average
5 min
10 min
5 min

Overall Time
Average
5 min
15 min
20 min

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4
5

6
7
8
9
10

Travel on Toll Rd
Exit Toll Rd. Travel
thru Boston to Callahan
Tunnel
Callahan Tunnel
Park Car in Airport
Travel to Ticket Counter
Get ticket
Pass thru security

15 min
20 min

35 min
55 min

5 min
15 min
10 min
10 min
20 min

60 min
75 min
85 min
95 min
115 min

Note that the above times are average times. Remember that the average time is calculated from 58
separate measurements.
Lean helps us document the process and then identify ways to eliminate the step or to improve the time that
particular step takes. Based on this concept, some immediate ideas come to mind to improve our process;
a) How about purchasing a fast pass1? b) Parking always takes a long time as well. How about having
someone drop us at the airport so that we can save the 15 minutes for parking? These small improvements
definitely impact the process and can produce measureable results. And the same way we improve our
airport trip can be used in our business processes. The tools can and are more complicated, but the concept
is exactly the same; document your process and then identify and implement small improvements over
time. Measure your success and continue to improve the process over time.
But is there a better way to improve the process? Yes! Small incremental steps can drive incremental
change, but sometimes a whole new approach is necessary.

Lean Results
I did purchase a fast pass and saved my toll time. I also purchased a gold passport card to get preferred
parking at the airport that is close to the terminal. But
those changes only reduced by travel time an average
of 10 minutes.
So how did I cut an additional 20 minutes off my
travel time AND significantly reduce my trip time
variation? By drastically changing the process!
As you know I live outside of Boston. Going to the
airport always involved driving in downtown Boston
(20 minutes in the above average process time along
with a lot of variation). Downtown Boston is known
for its small one way streets, notoriously poor
roadway signs, traffic and the big dig2. Part of the
big dig project was to create a 2 mile tunnel that
connects the toll road to the airport that allows you to
bypass downtown Boston. When the new Ted
Williams Tunnel opened up in January of 2003, it
immediately eliminated the need to drive through
downtown traffic. It reduced my trip time by 20
minutes (on average). The much bigger benefit was
that this process change significantly reduced the trip
time variation!

1
2

New Ted
Williams Tunnel

An electronic toll method to eliminate stopping that is available in Massachusetts.

The big dig is the 15 year $15B (planned) project to improve the infrastructure in downtown Boston.

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The morale of the story: Analyze your existing process and make minor improvements but dont be afraid
to investigate radical process changes to make major improvements. Dont be afraid to challenge existing
norms and rely on the strength of the team to drive success.

Six Sigma
A six sigma level quality process is 99.99966% perfect. Its also typically called a 5 9s (five nines)
process because of the first 5 nines in the percentage. The major goal of Six Sigma is to reduce variation in
the process. How good is a Six Sigma process? A Six Sigma process has 3.4 defects per 1 million
opportunities. Here are a few examples of day to day processes we live with and their quality levels.

What is Six Sigma Levels of Quality?

( 3.4 defects per 1 million opportunities)

99% Good (3.8 Sigma)

99.99966% Good (6 Sigma)

Unsafe drinking water for

almost 15 minutes each day

One unsafe minute every seven

months

2 short or long landings at

most major airports each
day

1 short or long landing every

5 years at each airport

No electricity for seven

hours each month

1 hour without electricity

every 34 years.

5,000 incorrect surgical

operations per week

1.7 incorrect operations per week

Calculations

JO Pearson Consulting

Applying Six Sigma

The airline industry example above exposes us to the fact that not all processes have to be 99.999% perfect.
I am sure the quality of baggage handling doesnt meet your expectations since we have all lost a bag
during our travels. But the airline industry DOES boast a 99.99998% (7 nines) quality level safety record
based on the number of fatal events per million.3 So not only do you need to consider where to apply Six
Sigma, you also need to determine what quality level is required. When a human life is involved, what
3

June 2009 Airline statistics. www.consumerwarningnetwork.com

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quality level and what risk level is

acceptable? Is the acceptable quality
level different when considering our
trip to the airport? Whats the impact
of missing a flight or having to rush?
A good rule of thumb: pick the right
quality level that is necessary to
delight the customer.

The chart below is a Histogram4 of my airport trip information. Its the same 58 trips, now sorted by the
length of time of the trip.

Airport Trip Times

16

93 minute average trip time

Number of Trips Observed

14

12

10
8

4
2

18
0.

17
0.

<=
o

17
0.
t

<=
o
16
0.
t

90
to
.
<=
10
10
0.
0.
to
<=
11
11
0.
0.
to
<=
12
12
0.
0
to
.
<=
13
13
0.
0.
to
<=
14
14
0.
0.
to
<=
15
0.

80
.

<=
to

80
.

90
.

70
.

<=

70
.

to

<=
to

60
.

50
.

to

<=

60
.

Time to Airport, Minutes

What does the chart tell us? The good news is that the data is starting to tell us more about the distribution
of data around our average trip time. In fact, it shows us that our trip is never less than 50 minutes and
those 36 trips were actually less than our average time! We can also see a few very bad trip times of
more than 170 minutes (almost 3 hours)! But the problem still remains. How much time should I plan for
the trip? Well the good news is that we know more about the data.
We all know that Saturday morning will have less rush hour traffic. We also know that during the week,
we can work around the rush hour by leaving early. So lets create one more chart before answering the
question on how to reduce our trip time and reduce wasted time at the airport.

Histogram - A graphical display of tabulated data, shown as bars.

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Airport Trip Times

(4:00 - 6:00 am)
6

65 minute average trip time

Number of Trips

0
50.0 to <= 60.0

60.0 to <= 70.0

70.0 to <= 80.0

Time to Airport, Minutes

The chart above shows my trip times when I leave the house between 4 and 6 am in the morning. We all
know that the time of day is a major source of variation in our data and this chart highlights that fact. The
chart above shows that our average time to the airport, if we travel between 4:00 and 6:00am in the
morning (before rush hour traffic!) is 65 minutes which is significantly less than our overall average time of
93 minutes.

Six Sigma Results

I constantly collect data on my trips to the airport. And I constantly adjust my trips based on the data.
Seasonality is a good example of a macro trend that would change my average trip times. A snow storm is
a local issue that can also impact specific trip times and must be considered.
For my specific experience, the opening of the Ted Williams Tunnel had the biggest impact on my airport
experience. It reduced the overall trip time by almost 18 minutes with one process change AND reduced a
significant amount of variation since I no longer had to leave the toll road and drive through the city. 5 That
process change represents the best of both worlds a reduction in time and variation.

Overall Results
Using basic Lean and Six Sigma tools, we can significantly improve our airport experience:
5

The time you leave for the airport is a significant factor on overall trip time.
The time you leave also turned out to be a significant factor on variation.
A significant process change (the Ted Williams Tunnel) had the biggest impact on my trip time and
variation.

The run chart data on page 2 is pre Ted Williams Tunnel opening.

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But even with these great results, our improvement project never really answered our question:
How much time should I allow for my trip to the airport so I dont miss my plane?
To answer this question we need to add another component to our analysis; risk and confidence factors.
Understanding and managing risk is a necessary part of any analysis. If we never wanted to miss a flight
(100% quality level) we could simply plan 3 hours for every trip. But what if you only allow 2 hours?
How many flights could you miss and what is the impact of a missed flight? Did you miss an important
business meeting? Or maybe it has very little impact since the Boston to NYC shuttle flies every 30
minutes. Based on these considerations, our real question is:
How much time should I allow for my trip if I want to have a 90% confidence factor that I will
make my flight 95% of the time?
In another installment, we can answer that question.

Recommendations
Combining Lean with Six Sigma provides a powerful methodology you can implement to drive operational
change and improvement. Applying Lean Sigma helped me improve my airport planning by making it
more visible and predictable.
These simple concepts can be applied to your
business processes. Focusing on improving or
eliminating as many steps in the process as
possible, and then by reducing the variation in
the remaining processes will help you improve
the quality of delivery of your product and
services. And when you apply this
methodology to customer facing processes you
can also impact customer loyalty.
Sustainable, fundamental improvements can be
achieved when Lean and Six Sigma are part of
an overall Quality Management System across
the enterprise.

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