{"id":1601,"date":"2005-07-25T08:07:53","date_gmt":"2005-07-25T08:07:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zmetro.com\/?p=1601"},"modified":"2005-07-25T08:07:53","modified_gmt":"2005-07-25T08:07:53","slug":"process_improve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=1601","title":{"rendered":"Process Improvement &#8211; American Airlines"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.csmonitor.com\/2005\/0725\/p01s03-usec.html\">Alexandra Marks<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>Two American Airlines mechanics didn&#8217;t like having to toss out $200 drill bits once they got dull. So they rigged up some old machine parts &#8211; a vacuum-cleaner belt and a motor from a science project &#8211; and built &#8220;Thumping Ralph.&#8221; It&#8217;s essentially a drill-bit sharpener that allows them to get more use out of each bit. The savings, according to the company: as much as $300,000 a year.<\/p>\n<p>And it was a group of pilots who realized that they could taxi just as safely with one engine as with two. That was instituted as policy has helped cut American&#8217;s fuel consumption even as prices have continued to rise to record levels.<\/p>\n<p>From the maintenance floor to the cockpit, American Airlines is daily scouring operations to increase efficiency and find even the smallest cost savings. It&#8217;s paid off: Last week, the company announced its first profit in almost five years.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Via <a href=\"http:\/\/globalguerrillas.typepad.com\/johnrobb\/2005\/07\/incremental_pro.html\">John Robb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Alexandra Marks: Two American Airlines mechanics didn&#8217;t like having to toss out $200 drill bits once they got dull. So they rigged up some old machine parts &#8211; a vacuum-cleaner belt and a motor from a science project &#8211; and built &#8220;Thumping Ralph.&#8221; It&#8217;s essentially a drill-bit sharpener that allows them to get more use [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1601"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1601\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}