April 27, 2006 – Raising the bar

Hi, it’s Glenn, and it's Thursday the 27th of April.  I am joined today in Chicago by Garry Kelly, our senior vice president of Strategic Sourcing, Continuous Improvement and our Chief Information Officer.

The work that we have done in restructuring has given us the foundation and the opportunity to compete and to build value for our shareholders.

The work we are beginning across the organization will improve performance and drive efficiency in every aspect of the business.  And, through a sustained effort, will over time become simply the way that we work.

Accountability for improvements sits firmly with each of us and the responsibilities that we all have across the company.

Garry will provide the tools and the support that enables continuous improvement, and I've asked him to join us today to talk to us about just that.

Garry…

Garry Kelly

Thanks, Glenn.

Let me start by telling all of you how excited I am for the opportunity to lead our Continuous Improvement efforts.  Simply stated, continuous improvement is designed to simultaneously improve cost, revenue, and customer experience through process optimization.

It will not only drive large-scale initiatives in many areas across the company, but will also engage the larger group of employees to participate in identifying and constantly pursuing opportunities for improvement.

As you well know, there are over 100 work processes that support United.  In my experience, each process is an opportunity for review with a goal towards standardization and simplification.  Some might be eliminated or consolidated in order to reduce time, effort and cost. 

Over the last several weeks, our team has been defining United’s Continuous Improvement program, and we are ready to get started.  We are in the process of building a group of skilled employees with deep experience in process optimization and LEAN or Six-Sigma concepts. 

Functional leaders, like me, will decide the priority of the continuous improvement efforts, which will include both step change and incremental initiatives. 

The Continuous Improvement team will enable and support these efforts and build continuous improvement capabilities across the organization.  Donna Brown has taken the lead to recruit internally and externally, and we are well on our way to completing the team. 

The Continuous Improvement team has also developed a standard approach, built upon the excellent work being done in United Services, United Cargo, Onboard, and Airport Operations.  This uniform approach contains the necessary tools and processes to drive consistency, standardization, and improved results across the entire organization.

As Glenn said, we are all committed to the goals of Continuous Improvement.  Jake Brace, Sara Fields and I are initiating step change process improvements in Finance, ISD and HR.  John Tague and Greg Taylor have begun a Continuous Improvement initiative in group sales that will capture both cost and revenue benefits.  We are also reviewing training, communications, and division-level financial planning and analysis with a goal of consolidation.

Our opportunity, and every employees' challenge, is to find ways to work more efficiently and effectively.  Continuous Improvement, our customer experience, and building a high-performance organization is the focus of our leadership and will require the commitment of everyone.  You will be learning much more about this in the coming weeks and months.

Back to you Glenn.

Glenn Tilton

Thanks very much, Garry.

It is certainly clear to me, and I hope to all of you on the call, that our ability to compete and succeed in the future will require that we think about our business differently than we have in the past.  The work that Garry has described represents an important step in that direction.

The reality of our business environment will continue to demand more from all of us.  The leadership bar is going to continue to be raised. What may have been sufficient in the past will not be so in the future.

Those who will succeed in the future will be those who show the way, pave a new path forward and demonstrate that which is possible.

That’s all for now, I'll be talking to you again soon.  Until then, stay focused on our customers, and on one another… and stay United.