Our Mission

Our mission was to surface the problems that were causing inefficiencies in operations, define how to address these issues, ensure solutions were carried by the (remaining) personnel, and to draft a realistic roll out plan. The whole initiative was to be supported by the use and implementation of a Lean methodology.

Results

• Full organisational redesign with new functions, clear job descriptions and required FTE’s per function.
• Implementation plan, including communication plan and new collective labour agreements & staffing rosters for union discussions.
• Reduction of 30% in management functions and 20% of technical workforce.
• Reduction of hangar entries of airbus fleet from 1/18 days towards 1/30 days.

Approach

• Interview sessions with all functions and managers, listening to the real concerns and creating trust. Lots of observations while walking along the technicians in the hangar, warehouse and on tarmac to understand the feedback received during the workshops.
• Extensive data analysis on stock management, work packages, reasons for Late Release or AOG , etc. If data was not available (e.g. line maintenance workload), time registrations were made.
• Lean pilot case on the A-check process to demonstrate the power of Lean and gain enthousiasm. Therefore, Kaizen workshops were organised with all functions involved. Value stream mapping of the current way of working and identification of the existing issues. This helped the team to understand the importance of developing cross-department thinking, and to joinly design the ideal future way of working.

Main challenges

• Strong reluctance of personnel to collaborate, and difficult atmosphere due to job protection.
• Highly experienced aviation expertise in the management team, but lack of management skills. Multiple management functions were vacant.
• Heritage of previous organisations was very strongly embedded in the structure, which was sometimes designed to fit the people, rather then to fit their needs.