LIFO and FIFO... never the twain shall meet
If you were the Human Resources Manager in a company that found itself in a situation where by, in order to keep the company afloat, it has no other option left for it than to downsize or reduce the number of employees, you may well employ the principle of ‘last in, first out (LIFO), to justify your mode of retrenchment. By doing so, you might be letting go of some of the brightest employees. Sadly though, that’s the way the cookie crumbles.
On the other hand if you were the Chef in a restaurant, you would prefer to use the ‘first in – first out’ (FIFO) golden rule, to match the actual flow in the restaurant, whereby, ingredients purchased earlier with the nearest expiration date are used to avoid spoilage, waste and costs. Again, you might have to compromise with not getting to use some of the freshly purchased food.
As observed from the two examples cited above, LIFO and FIFO thus play contrasting roles in ensuring a rational approach in differing business sectors. Put differently, LIFO or FIFO may work for some but not for others.
A case in point refers to the British Airways (BA) baggage handler who noticed a flaw in the airlines baggage loading procedure that ‘frustrated’ first - class passengers by having to wait on average, 20 – 25 minutes at the carousel, for their bags. Time and again, first-class passengers who flew BA, would stride upto him, some by then infuriated, to ask when their bags would arrive?
Despite all the pampering first- class passengers receive from the time they book until they disembark; starting with being chauffeured to the gate in a limousine, then provided a VIP check-in, where they are then pampered, overfed, and get to sleep on a lie-flat bed before being allowed to disembark before all others, after the plane lands… it kind of undid all the good work done by BA staff until then.
To the first-class passenger, the impatient wait for his or her bag, is further aggravated when passengers perhaps least deserving of ‘first-class’ luggage service, i.e. those flying on ‘stand-by’ or who had travelled economy (unkindly referred to but not without justification; ‘cattle-class), were getting it. For a moment the widening gulf between first-class and economy passengers had shrunk a wee bit.
Digging into the matter, the baggage handler discovered that the luggage of those who boarded the plane last (those on stand-by and those who habitually run late), was loaded last and unloaded first. His simple suggestion was “load first-class luggage last”. Although the idea was simple and made enormous sense, it required BA to entirely change its luggage-handling procedures in all airports it flew, worldwide.
This took time, but it was done with the result that the average time of unloading first-class luggage from the plane to the carousel dipped from the average 20 to 25 minutes to below 10 minutes worldwide, and under 7 minutes on certain routes.
A dedicated, motivated and curious-to-learn employee, who listened to the customers’ pain-point, determined a method to improve the system-something which all those above him including the experts had failed to pay attention to in the start-to-end customer journey. A service award of US$ 18,000 plus two round-trip tickets to the US was his reward from BA.
Shafeek Wahab – Editor, Hospitality Sri Lanka, Consultant, Trainer, Ex- Hotelier
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