Underutilization of Airport Kiosks Project Example

Six Sigma DMAIC project increased kiosk utilization rate by 30% and reduced annual operating costs by more than $241,000--JetStream Airways is an established airline company that prides itself on quality of service, on-time arrivals and fair fares. While JetStream installed new self-service check-in kiosks at several airports -- costing $1.5 million -- the company did not see the reduction in reliance on check-in agents that they expected, and received complaints about the kiosks from travelers. In addition, travelers refused to use the kiosks, were unable or unwilling to start and finish their transactions, or required significant assistance from check-in agents during the process. VOC was the primary source of data for the project. It allowed the Six Sigma team to fully understand the issues felt by travelers, appropriately scope the project, and define a specific objective for our primary project metric. The primary project metric was defined as the percentage, or yield, of trav