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Career takes off

Rob Maruster ’01EvMBA Vice President, Operations Delta Air Lines Atlanta, Ga.

For most executives, their greatest challenges span months or years. But Rob Maruster ‘01EvMBA, the vice president of operations for Delta Air Lines in Atlanta, faced the biggest challenge of his career in a single day.

On January 31, Delta changed half its schedule. For Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, where Delta operates the largest airline hub in the country, the change meant taking “a very different way of approaching the way we’ve always done things,” Maruster says. Previously, Delta would bring in 100 airplanes to Atlanta almost all at once, allow travelers to make connections, and then send the planes right out again. Under the new schedule, planes arrive and leave roughly once a minute throughout the day.

“Anything that touches an airplane basically had its entire workflow redesigned,” Maruster explains. “What we really looked at is, what is the critical path to turning airplanes quickly?” Even such details as when trash is cleaned up were reconsidered, all to help meet the company’s goal of keeping its planes up in the air and earning money a bit more of the time.

To make the task of managing the new schedule for Delta’s 685 to 705 daily departures from Atlanta still more daunting: the 33-year-old executive had only taken his position in managing operations in the 6000-worker hub last October. “It was sort of a crash course to get this hub ready for the schedule change,” he recalls.

“I was promoted several times…it was a direct result from me taking things literally from the classroom right into my job.”

The classes he took on decision information analysis at Goizueta have been crucial in helping him with this process, he says. He also seems to have taken the case-study approach to heart: before redesigning the system, he and his team toured the facilities of such supply chain leaders as Fedex and Toyota.

Maruster began his career at Delta shortly after graduating from Auburn University, as a part-time customer service agent in San Diego. From there, he worked his way up through the ranks. The last few promotions Maruster credits in part to his school work at Goizueta. During the years he studied at Emory, he says, “I was promoted several times. It was a direct result of me taking things literally from the classroom right into my job,” he says.

Away from work, Maruster enjoys a busman’s holiday, coping with the operational challenges of being part of a family of four. “All my spare time is taken up with them and all they do!” he says.

—Bennett Voyles

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