Improving Performance and Flexibility at Jeppesen: The World's Leading Aviation-Information Company

Jeppesen Sanderson, Inc. maintains, manufactures, and distributes flight manuals containing safety information for over 300,000 pilots and 400 airlines worldwide. Its service deteriorated when a growing line of over 100,000 aviation charts overwhelmed its production system. We developed optimization-based decision support tools that improved production planning. Concurrently, we developed a method for evaluating investments in production technology. Our work reduced lateness and improved production processes, which led to a decrease in customer complaints, a reduction in costs of nearly 10 percent, an increase in profit of 24 percent, and the creation of a new OR group. Today, OR-based decision support systems are spreading to all areas of the company.