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Chapter 2 Global E-business and Collaboration 79

themselves — imagine saving around 0.1% of $2.5 bil- tion. Some of the 140,000 passengers that were being
lion. It’s a lot of money! served by the international Hub at the time suffered
The new baggage system at Schiphol is not flaw- baggage loss.
less. In November 2012, a special warrant by local
Sources: Based on data available online. Partly acquired from
Police was issued that required stopping the tracks
Amsterdam Airport Schiphol Case Study Video, available online.
at Schiphol as part of a drug-smuggling investiga-

CASE STUDY QUESTIONS

1. How many levels of complexity can you identify 3. What is the problem that Schiphol is trying to
in Schiphol’s baggage conveyor network? solve? Discuss the business impact of this
problem.
2. What are the management, organization, and
technology components of Schiphol’s baggage 4. Think of the data that the network uses. What
conveyor network? kinds of management reports can be generated
from that data?
Case contributed by Damian A. Tamburri and
Patricia Lago, VU University Amsterdam

schedule. Today, many of these reports are delivered online. Figure 2.3 shows
how a typical MIS transforms transaction-level data from inventory, production,
and accounting into MIS files that are used to provide managers with reports.
Figure 2.4 shows a sample report from this system.
MIS typically provide answers to routine questions that have been specified
in advance and have a predefined procedure for answering them. For instance,
MIS reports might list the total pounds of lettuce used this quarter by a fast-food
chain or, as illustrated in Figure 2.4, compare total annual sales figures for
specific products to planned targets. These systems generally are not flexible
and have little analytical capability. Most MIS use simple routines, such as
summaries and comparisons, as opposed to sophisticated mathematical models
or statistical techniques.
Other types of business intelligence systems support more non-routine
decision making. Decision-support systems (DSS) focus on problems that
are unique and rapidly changing, for which the procedure for arriving at a
solution may not be fully predefined in advance. They try to answer questions
such as these: What would be the impact on production schedules if we were to

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