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Lufthansa Technik Philippines (LTP) realized that there is a need for a greater efficiency and improved quality within the company to stay productive and competitive in today's business environment. To attain this goal, the company has turned to the successful model used for years by manufacturing firms like Toyota, known primarily now as Lean system. The fundamental role of Lean is the reduction or total elimination of wastes through continuous improvement (kaizen). The mother company, Lufthansa Technik AG, started with the similar program a few years ago and have already obtained dramatic improvements in their performance. The Lean principles, which were then applied mostly only in manufacturing, has been proven to work in the MRO industry. The challenge now lies on how and if this will also work in LTP.
LTP's lean journey started late 2007 in one of the divisions in Aircraft Maintenance serving LTP's most important customer, Philippine Airlines (PAL). A-Check Division (MA3), with a total manpower of around 150, is responsible for the performance of A-Checks in all of PAL fleet. This pilot project was critical, knowing that its success will be essential for the further Lean change transformation throughout the whole company. It was initially spearheaded by one of the Lean Specialists belonging to Lean Division (GF5), a group primarily tasked to facilitate lean projects. The project suffered its 'birth pains' in its first few months as resistance to change and the mindset that they have been using certain process in the last 10, 20 years sets in. The project eventually took off as the Lean Team showed remarkable improvements that resulted to a better buy-in of the people. From June until present, the MA3 project is now being run by a group of MA3 Mechanics requiring minimal assistance from GF5. The team has achieved, among other performance parameters, an 89% A-Check Timeliness rate (from 51% at the start of the project) and 58% work on the aircraft (from 17%). In July 2008, MA3 has also posted their record 14 consecutive timely A-checks. Though the bar is being set higher every time a target is achieved, the MA3 mechanics are undaunted and ready to take the challenge. They know by experience that the only way to achieve better results is to continuously improve.
Inspired by the success in MA3, LTP has broadened its Lean implementation to Aircraft Overhaul and currently has Lean projects running simultaneously with one another. The road to Lean transformation might still be a long way to go and a very challenging task ahead, but the results are proving to be worth the journey.
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