The Company
Although part of the Lufthansa group of companies, LTLGS UK serves a high proportion of the world’s airline fleets as an independent, international maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) service provider. Customers include names like Virgin, BA, Air France and Ryanair. With an annual throughput of 300+ overhauls, the company is one of the leading landing gear specialists in Europe.The business has expanded rapidly since it was established in 1998, steadily increasing its product range and creating a very broad global customer base. In addition to its UK facility, LTLGS has landing gear MRO operations in Hamburg, Los Angeles and China.
The Challenge
An aircraft’s landing gear is a complex assembly of anything between 1,000 and 3,000 components and can account for between four to five per cent of an aircraft’s take-off weight. A scheduled overhaul can take anything between 30 to 45 days, involving strip down, inspection, repair, refurbishing and replacement and build.“The complexity comes from having to work to constantly changing customer maintenance schedules, which are further compounded by unscheduled repairs to Aircraft On Ground (AOG),” explains Brett Lambourne, Planning & Scheduling Manager. “Even though we provide ‘exchange assets’, scheduling can be a nightmare. Until the initial stripping and inspection loop has been completed it’s not possible to accurately schedule repairs, machining, manufacturing, plating, testing, fitting, rebuild and so on. And, of course, different elements compete for limited resources.”
Until the introduction of Orchestrate production scheduling software, planning was performed using multiple spreadsheets, created and maintained by different people in different departments. Getting the right mix of work going through production can have an enormous impact on cash flow and profitability, none of the spreads sheets were linked and the commercial or financial aspects were not part of the planning process.
The Solution
The company recognized the scale of the challenge and recruited Brett because of his experience in planning and scheduling, gained in the (construction) Manufacturing industry. He joined the company in December 2012 and, as part of a systems evaluation, downloaded a free version of Orchestrate from the web. “It was an ideal test of the system’s capabilities as well as ease of use,” says Brett. “In no time at all, I had developed a fully functional personalized demonstration, using our own data - without any need to contact Production Modelling, the software authors. This was sufficient to convince me that the system would easily accommodate our reporting and planning needs. Because the demo was built using our own processes and data, it was also an ideal tool to convince others within the company.”“We went live in my fourth month with the company, including integration with our SQL-based systems used produce works orders. Integration with legacy and ERP systems is another of Orchestrate’s strengths and, in practice, took us just a matter of hours.”
Introduction of new systems have, of course, meant a culture change from independent list-driven processes to coordinated, ‘visual’ plans and schedules. Brett believes that the ease of use and the graphic output from Orchestrate have helped speed up the process of culture change.
The Benefits
“Orchestrate production scheduling software has dramatically cut the time taken in planning and has given us an accurate end-to-end planning view for the first time, helping us to improve productivity. By June, we had cut the time devoted to planning by 20-30% and I can confidently predict that improvement to increase to a total of 60%. As to throughput in build-to-schedule, that has improved from a historic performance of 70-80% to a current achievement of 95%.”Marrying the commercial aspects into planning will help us achieve a much more cost-effective mix of work going through the production and finishing loops. Meanwhile, systems integration has speeded up the process, eliminated manual data entry and transcription errors.”
Brett also reports an improvement in customer communications. “As a recent example, we were able to accommodate a rush request by re-scheduling another customer’s work, with each customer confident of delivery because we were able to show them how completion would be achieved. Again, this is a very ‘visual’ approach.”
The Future
Currently, LTLGS uses a projector in their morning planning meetings and printed output for use in the works. Once everyone is fully used to the new format, they intend to have displays around the production bays, an approach successfully adopted by a number of Orchestrate customers.Finally, the systems will be rolled out to other facilities around the world. Brett Lambourne: “The company plans common systems in each of our facilities and our next project is to start in August at the Landing Factory in Hamburg Germany. Next in line will be a visit to Sun Valley, LA, for review of adopting orchestrate later in the year. Orchestrate production scheduling software already has big name users in North America. Last of all, I believe we will have a opportunity to review the potential of implementing the system at our plant in Beijing, China – probably a first for Orchestrate in the People’s Republic.
