The objective of the iRoster Program, as it is referred to by Qantas, is to enable efficiency gains in ground-based operations at its Australian airport and freight terminals.
In order to achieve these gains the company recognised the need to provide its workforce management community with an integrated workforce management system supporting plan optimisation, roster creation and day of operations optimisation services supported with appropriate communication, reporting and analytics capabilities. Finally the decision was made to implement the GroundStar system of German-based company INFORM.
Workforce management processes and tools prior to the implementation of the GroundStar system were not sophisticated enough to deliver the required efficiency gains; some areas used old legacy systems, some were paper-based and some utilised spreadsheet models. There was only limited long range planning and no detailed operational control. New summer/winter season roster planning took about three months from production to revision, publication and agreement.
Qantas employs 37,000 staff, of which approximately 5,500 are rostered domestic ground staff. GroundStar is now in daily use across the whole Australian continent to support the staff planning, rostering and deployment.
“It has been a pleasure to work with a very professional Qantas team over the last three years,” says Stefanie Herrman, project manager at INFORM. “Considering the size of the project with implementations at different airports, operations and different applications, the change management process actively promoted by the Qantas team has been crucial to the success of the project. I was impressed by the creative and motivated way that this initiative supported the implementation of GroundStar starting from the design phase through implementation and into the support aspects of GroundStar.”
INFORM is a team of raised-in-industry ICT professionals who research, develop and deliver cutting-edge software solutions that improve airport and ground handling logistics, and who also provide consultancy services. INFORM’s flagship suite of products, GroundStar, is used by over 50 organisations in more than 200 airports worldwide.