Engagement
Using artificial intelligence to improve efficiency in the aviation industry Hear from Harshpal Singh Vilku about his Strategic Business Project as part of his MBA (Full-time).
T
aking place from June to September, the Strategic Business Project forms the concluding and essential part of the Durham MBA (Full-time). Students work with businesses to analyse and evaluate a strategic issue. This provides an excellent opportunity for students to gain experience relevant to their career aspirations and enhance their professional network.
Issue 11 / 2022
Full-time MBA alumnus Harshpal Singh Vilku has a background in food and textiles and currently works for Coca Cola Europacific Partners. He was looking for a Strategic Business Project which would be challenging, interesting, and one where he could apply his management knowledge. With a keen interest in the aviation industry, Harshpal decided that a project with Boeing would be an ideal fit.
What was your project about?
My Strategic Business Project was focused on aviation turnaround management. Aircraft turnaround operations are the activities conducted to prepare an aircraft ready for departure. The turnaround process is a critical activity for airlines, airports and ground handlers and if done efficiently can help to save billions of dollars by overcoming delays and damages. Turnaround operations have been evolving from traditional to more technologically driven methods. The emergence of new technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) has opened new possibilities that can bring even more transparency to turnarounds. Boeing is leading this change by developing an AI-based model which offers two versions, a short-term and long-term solution. The purpose of my Strategic Business Project was to research and plan a successful business model for the two versions of the AI-based model. The project explored what the market was like for turnaround operations, researched how tech-ready stakeholders were, investigated what additional I have always been infrastructure would be needed fascinated by airline for stakeholders, reviewed which brands and listening set of stakeholders we should directly to officials work with first, and significantly, from major airlines covered the data privacy issues was an exhilarating related to the implementation experience. of both models. The project also involved interviewing stakeholders from multiple airlines, airports, and ground handlers across different regions.
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