TAKE OFF WITHOUT LOSING THE GROUND
UNDER YOUR FEET
Lufthansa Technik Logistik Services (LTLS), a fully-owned subsidiary of Lufthansa Technik, is one of the leading suppliers of logistics solutions for the aviation industry. The greatest cost factor here is time. With global growth propelling LTLS forward, by 2012 the moment had come for them to increase the efficiency and flexibility of their processes. The focus was on improving management performance. At the same time, however, process transparency had to be increased for everyone involved, and the response period to volatile demand had to be faster. With the support of Staufen, LTLS management decided to introduce Shop Floor Management (SFM), initially as a pilot project in Hamburg.
SHOP FLOOR MANAGEMENT AT LTLS
The managers in charge of logistics were moved out of the office and into operations: right to the site of the added value. With new management instruments and modified management habits, they quickly succeeded in finding faster and more effective ways to solve problems within a short time. New transparent key process indicators allowed decisions to become more understandable to employees. And rather than making management decisions behind closed doors in conference rooms, LTLS worked jointly to improve their daily routines.
The managers, who had been sensitized through their coaching, are now on site every day and can support their employees in solving problems on short notice. Introducing a “logistics journal” — a schedule for management — created clearer structures. Furthermore, employees are more strongly integrated because of performance dialogues.
In the course of challenge days, work processes were reviewed so as to identify waste and extrapolate what the right optimizations would be. The focus here was also on employees, who were not only ideally integrated as they offered suggestions for improvement: they did a great deal to help optimize daily processes.
The system was a winner: in the meantime, information is exchanged daily at the same time throughout all of the sites in Germany. The more rapid response time means that parts not only reach clients faster; employee operational planning is also more cost-effective than it was before. At LTLS, Shop Floor Management led to numerous improvements and enhanced the corporation’s competitive advantage. Effective use of SFM proved itself to be useful not only at the larger sites in Frankfurt and Hamburg but also at the smaller ones like those in Cologne and Berlin. Shop Floor Management will now be consistently developed across all of the German sites and is to be implemented at the international sites in the US and China as well.
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