Executive Summary

Piedmont Airlines recently invested over $1 million in state of the art equipment and employee development in order to forecast and analyze the appropriate amount of discounted fares to offer per flight. The company discovered that by offering several discounted flights to consumers willing to book their travel well in advance of their departure date left many options available for the business traveler who needed to book much closer to the actual departure date. The analysis was the task of the Revenue Enhancement Department (RED) managed by Marilyn Hoppe. While this state of the art equipment was a step in the right direction, Marilyn believed that there were still a lot of subjective decisions being made and …show more content…

Still, she will want to avoid over-focusing on the negative one way or another as much as she avoids foolish optimism (Hammond, Keeney & Raiffa, 1999). Contrarily, Marilyn should not equally fall into the trap of discounting what the new system does and can do.
The question that should be asked is if the system is being used to its full potential. The fact that the business analysts use their own judgment to make decisions based on analytical data may not change once all is said and done. Additionally, there may not be any confirming evidence that there is still a potential loss of revenue; only that Marilyn is uncomfortable with the human-factor in the analysis. This is particularly important given the vast amounts of data that is gathered and used in the analysis. As previously mentioned, with the right people actively involved, Marilyn will be able to generate good alternatives for exploration and have accountability that the right questions are being asked throughout the process.
The Six-Hat Thinking Method
As Marilyn faces a very difficult road ahead, she may want to consider using the 6 Hat Thinking Method. The decisions are sure to be complex and this will cause confusion in the decision making process. The Six-Hat Method will organize and segment the confusion into more manageable parts. Marilyn may choose to go through the 6 hats all on her own or