**4.1 Stage 0—Constructing the organizational 'picture'**

This initial stage had the objective of giving an overview of the case study environment, and it was divided in two main topics: an overall industry contextualization; and a specific case study contextualization.

The first topic started with an overview of the air transport industry and its current trends, followed by a deep-down into the airport environment. Here, a brief overview over its control and supervision was made, and some generic characteristics were laid down concerning multi-airport systems, international differences, stakeholder's mapping and economic chain, and the main regulatory drivers. Afterwards, the focus was directed to the airport's Baggage Handling System (BHS), where a generic description of its objectives, work process and primary functions was made, along with the specific regulatory drivers and upcoming regulatory frames on BHS industry.

The second topic intended to be company-specific within the case study boundaries. It started by giving a technical description of the equipment and controlling systems used for its operation. Then, the specific BHS ecosystem was portrayed, along with its main stakeholders and their influence/impact on BHS operations. Following, the BHS' operational performance and its main dimensions were addressed. Afterwards, a thorough description of the operational characteristics and the workflow along the various stakeholders involved on a baggage journey was made, depicting the intrinsic dependencies between the various BHS stakeholders. At last, an organizational overview was done showing the overall structure and the insite hierarchy of operation and management, as depicted on **Figure 5**. Subsequently, a final description of the BHS operational management is addressed, in order to understand how the daily processes and concerns were managed and resolved.

**105**

**Table 2.**

CR Operators

3 2

*\*BTO–Baggage Terminal Operations.*

*A Hybrid Human-Data Methodology for the Conception of Operational Performance…*

old vs. new, frequent flyer vs. novice, family travel vs. business).

**4.3 Stage 2—Defining and ideating on the problem-solution space**

personas' set depicted on **Figure 6**.

quently, the solution ideation.

Op. Manager

\*\* 2

*List of semi-structured interviews, grouped by project's stakeholder.*

Contract Manager

*\*\*One of the managers interviewed combines the function of operations and contract manager.*

A total of seven personas were constructed in order to have a concise and coherent definition of the information gathered for further presentation and discussion with a focus group composed by experts. They comprised the main concerns and the global opinion between the interviewees belonging to each stakeholder's persona. Some stakeholder's categories were aggregated according to the relative importance to the BHS operational environment and management, resulting on the

This stage focuses on developing an iterative and collaborative environment for the discussion and refinement of the perceived problem space, as well as for the exploration of the solution space. This was an iterative process of exploration and discussion, in order to clarify and improve the problem definition and conse-

**Internal Stakeholders External Stakeholders Operational Back-office Airport Ground** 

> Sales Digital Business

Customer Service

\*\* 1 1 1 1 2

**Handling**

Manager

BTO\* Operations

After constructing the initial industry picture and understanding the surroundings where the BHS is included and its basic characteristics, the next step was to empathize with the various stakeholders which interact or impact the system's operations. A collection of tools was employed throughout this stage to harness on the gathered data and provide profound insights about the intuitive and relational aspects of human relations and people's reasoning when performing their jobs. Approximately 7 hours of shadowing were undertaken to carefully observe BHS control room operators while operating the BHS. Here, the researcher had the opportunity of first-hand contact with the real-time management, which allowed him to pose some specific questions about the interactions between the CR operators and the information systems utilized for the BHS' operations management. Additionally, several semi-structured interviews with the BHS' main stakeholders were conducted to obtain a rich and broad view from the various perspectives that come into play when taking BHS operation performance into account. A total of 12 interviews were performed by the researcher, segregated according to the **Table 2**. Each semi-structured interview was used to construct a mind map that allow for a summary of the gathered information and themes discussed, which helps to mentally process and reflect over them to generate deeper insights. Alongside these interviews, the author also performed a total of five customer narratives with different passengers, with the objective of understanding some common pains and needs that the final customer of the whole baggage journey could have. In order to get a broader picture and minimize biases throughout these collected stories, the author diversified the customers' profiles along the five customer narratives (e.g.

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.93631*

**4.2 Stage 1—Exploring users' pains and needs**

**Figure 5.** *In-site organizational hierarchical structure of BHS management.*

*A Hybrid Human-Data Methodology for the Conception of Operational Performance… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.93631*
