"A process is a process is a process, whether it is the manufacturing floor or airline passenger check-in. And what worked for manufacturing in Detroit years ago is also working for British Airways."

Writes Laurie Orlov at CIO Update.

"John Mornamente, joined British Airways in 2000 and now heads IT and Business Change functions within BA’s Information Management Organization. He helped CIO Paul Cody and BA management apply Lean Manufacturing principles to a program they called 'Customer Enabled BA'. In addition to using Lean to identify and eliminate wasted steps in servicing customers, Paul and John drove the introduction of a set of over arching principles they call 3PI—Proposition (or value), Process, People, and finally the Single IT Solution (SITS)."

"As the project proceeded, the compelling 'customer proposition' helped the airline evaluate and combine 3000 fare rules down to three fare conditions. The Process rule helped them design standard processes that whittled 40 ways to do something down to a list of five options from a drop-down list. And the People dimension of the project drove the effort to help the customer 'get it right the first time'. This enabled better customer service and satisfaction. Finally, the SITS approach meant that call center staff, for example, would use the same tools as the customer."

With these kinds of initiavtives, John managed to achieve and exceed a ?100 million/year savings within two years.

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