By FARA AISYAH / Pic By MUHD AMIN NAHARUL

The application of Lean Six Sigma methodology has proven to be effective for the Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd’s (MAHB) operational and service efficiency, said group CEO Raja Azmi Raja Nazuddin.

“Data have shown that by applying Lean methodologies we achieved our target at almost 90% of the time with the average queue time at immigration being 10 minutes for departure and 15 minutes for arrival,” he said in a statement yesterday.

By going through the Lean process, MAHB found that one of the issues was that passengers lack the awareness in the procedures and the list of prohibited items when going through the security checkpoint.

This inefficiency has led to inconveniencing the passengers when they need to go through the screening twice.

“By the simple expedient of putting up the information on digital screens near the security checkpoint, it has reduced the number of passengers that need to be re-screened from 40% to 10%, thus making the process faster for everyone in the queue,” said Raja Azmi.

MAHB has started to embrace the Lean methodology in early 2018, and has been implementing 90% of the 139 Lean initiatives identified to date.

These initiatives include improving way finding, reducing queue time, reducing congestion, providing helpful information to passengers at critical touch points and improving maintenance.

According to Raja Azmi, MAHB is able to alleviate passenger anxiety while queueing at immigration by introducing the queue time indicator so that passengers are able to gauge the time for them to clear the immigration process.

The introduction of the snake queue system has also helped smoothen the flow of the queue.