LSG Sky Chefs Transforms Its Business Using Lean Process Improvement

As part of its annual European Process Excellence Summit in London, IQPC recognizes the accomplishments of the Process Excellence community through its much anticipated Process Excellence Awards. This April, IQPC honored the worlds largest provider of in-flight services, LSG Sky Chefs the brand name of all the groups in the LSG Lufthansa Service Holding AG, a 100 percent subsidiary of Deutsche Lufthansa AG with the 2010 Process Excellence Award for Best Green Process Improvement Project and the Honorary Mention Award for Best Start Up Program. In this Six Sigma IQ spotlight interview, Pankaj Aggarwal, Senior Vice President Lean Enterprise at LSG Sky Chefs, reflects on what drives the success of his organizations Lean Process. Why did LSG Sky Chefs decide to go with a Lean Enterprise program in 2008? What made the Lean methodology so appealing? In 2008, we launched the program, Upgrade to Industry Leadership, which aimed to bring the company to the level of best in the industry. To achieve this goal, we had to transform the company within a very short timeframe. Keeping in mind that our processes are very manual in nature, we chose Lean as a key methodology to drive this change process.

How was Lean initially perceived by employees and management? Did your program run into any buy-in challenges? There was certainly a mixed reaction to Lean due to the changes it could bring about. However, buy-in challenges are usually part of such a large-scale program, but the key is how you address them. Sometimes the overcoming of the buy-in challenges brings more clarity and conviction in your approach to the deployment.

What step-by-step Lean deployment approach did LSG Sky Chefs take in rolling out its program? What were the major lessons along the way? The first step was gaining buy-in from the top management. We did this by taking management through training and workshops so that they could practically experience the benefits of Lean and make conscious decisions, as opposed to basing their decisions on theory only. Second, we focused on working on key facilities that we considered to benefit most from Lean. By doing this task, we improved the quality of these facilities dramatically; we then worked on making these processes even better and faster. Third, we created pockets of excellence in different parts of our worldwide offices to create a

pull effect across the globe and at the same time created best practices of different processes. Fourth, we replicated those best practices across the major sites to multiply the results and worked on developing the regional teams to sustain the program in the different regions. How did LSG Sky Chefs ensure that this Lean deployment would be sustainable? There were key decisions we took to make this program sustainable. The first decision was to develop regional Lean organizations so that the talent would reside where the action is. The second was to train 1,500 people on Lean and problem solving. We also decided to provide hundreds of people with Lean practitioner training so that key people in each facility had proper knowledge of Lean. Lean is one of the key strategic initiatives in the overall strategy of the company and one of the primary drivers of sustainability.

LSG Sky Chefs Lean Enterprise program earned honorary mention in the Best Start-up Program category at the 2010 IQPC European Process Excellence Awards. What critical success factors and results do you believe led to this honor? I believe that these critical success factors were our customer first attitude, speed, focus on results, development of people, and our management commitment.

How did your Dish Wash Process Change project which won the 2010 IQPC European Process Excellence Award for Best Green Improvement Project fit in with your organizations overall Lean initiative? The dish washing process is one of the key processes in our organization. It has a very high impact on customer quality and operational performance, its highest impact being on the environment. This project thus became a very obvious choice for us to implement. In addition, LSG Sky Chefs has a huge opportunity to replicate this project across almost 200 locations of the company.

What are the areas of opportunity for the Lean Enterprise program going forward in 2011? The areas of opportunity for our program are going beyond the four walls to complete our supply chain, extending the program into non-operational areas, and converting the program from a continuous improvement initiative to the way we run our business.

Interview by Genna Weiss About Pankaj Aggarwal Pankaj Aggarwal is the Regional Director for telecommunications giant Indus Towers. He has nearly two decades of experience working in Operations, Operational excellence and Supply Chain Management roles. Prior to Indus Towers, Pankaj worked for Lufthansa, Delphi Automotive, General Electric, Suzuki Motors, KPMG Peat Marwick, and Tata Engineering. While working for these companies he gained experience in the automotive industry, research and development, manufacturing operations, consultancy, quality management, supplier development, and auditing. He has worked with more than 300 companies of various types in various capacities. Aggarwal is a mechanical engineer and has an MBA in Finance and Marketing. In addition, he is a certified Six Sigma Master Black Belt, DFSS Master, Shainin Journeyman, Certified auditor for QS 9000/ ISO 9000 and Lean Leader. I invite you to join as a member of the PEX Network Group http://tinyurl.com/3hwakem, you will have access to Key Leaders Globally, Events, Webinars, Presentations, Articles, Case Studies, Blog Discussions, White Papers, and Tools and Templates. To access this free content please take 2 minutes for a 1 time FREE registration at http://tiny.cc/tpkd0 PEX Network, a division of IQPC, facilitates access to a wealth of relevant content for Process Excellence, Lean, and Six Sigma practitioners. Further enhanced with an online community of your peers, we will provide you with the tools and resources to help you perform more effective and efficiently, while enhancing the quality operations within your organization. As our industry becomes more and more dependent on the Web for information, PEXNetwork.com has been developed to provide Six Sigma professionals with instant access to information. Leveraging our strength and foundation in education, IQPC and the Process Excellence Network are uniquely positioned to provide a comprehensive library of webcasts gathered from our events, as well as exclusive content from leaders in the industry.