Brain off, autopilot on?! One of the common prejudices pilots are facing these days. However, aviation is much more than that! It is hard to believe, but the parallels to operational excellence, common LEAN management tools, and especially the culture of continuous improvement are striking.
As a former Porsche Consulting consultant and Director Operational Excellence as well as Plant Manager; and now active airline pilot, I would like to relate our everyday work with a few examples to operational excellence so that you can understand the parallels and transfer them to your specific company processes.
To start with, I chose as an example “quick machine set-up” (SMED). By this I mean not only the classic exchange of machine tools, but also e.g. the changeover of an operation room in a hospital, when changing from one patient to another... or a passenger aircraft during a turnaround. Let's try to relate this to each other and understand what the success factors in aviation are.
The turnaround is defined from block-on at the gate to the aircraft's off-block. In principle, this is dead time, because no money is earned during the ground time. The turnaround during short and medium-haul routes takes between 30 and 60 minutes, depending on the operation. It is rather unusual to carry out planned maintenance with passengers getting on and off. During the ground time, the aircraft is unloaded and loaded, refueled, catered, fresh water is refilled and waste water is drained, the interior is cleaned, and the number of passengers is passed on from the gate. These processes are coordinated by the so-called ramp agent who collects all information and passes it on to the crew. The ramp agent´s abilities play a decisive role in every turnaround, for a punctual departure. The crew inspects the aircraft from outside, the cabin crew checks the safety equipment, and the flight management system is fed with data by the flight crew. All entries are then cross-checked and discussed during the briefing. As you can see, keeping track of things is a challenge, especially for the captain who is the pilot in command, particularly on days when everything is working against a punctual departure. So what are the essential success factors to guarantee a smooth process? Let's take a closer look at that.
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Factor 1 - Clear tasks, skills and responsibilities
In contrast to the popular opinion that “the co-pilot only assists”, in modern aviation, the distribution of tasks during each flight is divided into so-called “pilot flying” and “pilot monitoring” roles, instead of captain and co-pilot. On a regular day with at least two flight segments, e.g. for the outward and return flight, each pilot takes on the role of pilot flying and pilot monitoring, while the captain always retains decision-making authority in the aircraft and is therefore the final authority. The clearly defined distribution of roles means that it is crystal clear in every flight situation who turns or presses which button, who transmits, who enters data into the flight management system (FMS), who calls out a checklist, who reads it out and who checks the corresponding systems; and particularly, WHEN this is done. One can see that tasks, competencies and responsibilities have different levels. The captain is always the captain at the macro level, but depending on the flight, he may not be the flying pilot, but “only” the monitoring pilot. His duties as a pilot change, but they are clearly defined at all times. In the same way, the co-pilot knows that although he is flying the aircraft, the ultimate decision-making authority remains with the captain.
This has the following advantages: The areas of responsibility are clearly described, everyone has its own clearly defined tasks. Unclear responsibilities, duplication of work or forgetting to do tasks is minimized. Any questions or ambiguities that arise can always be addressed to the right person immediately.
Questions for you to reflect: Do you recognize parallels to your change-over or retrofit process? Are tasks, competencies and responsibilities of your employees clearly defined? Are some tasks forgotten during your change-over process? Is your process with regard to the division of tasks absolutely free of confusion? If you have already answered “yes” to the questions in this section, then I am sure that you are not a LEAN beginner, but rather at an advanced stage of operational excellence!
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Factor 2 - Standardization of procedures, aircraft variants, language and commands
During the first factor, we discussed that on an airliner there is a flying and a monitoring pilot. Let's take a closer look at this. The selection of who is the flying pilot and who is the monitoring one, is of great importance, because the "Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)" determine exactly who is, for instance, entering the route, or in which order and by whom certain systems are checked. Finally, the flying pilot also conducts the “Departure Briefing”, during which the highlights of the departure route and the emergency route in the event of an engine failure are discussed in a defined manner. I would like to emphasize again that SOPs not only determine which task is done by whom, but also defines exactly the order in which they have to be carried out. The advantage is obvious, because the repetition of the same sequences establishes so-called “flows” for the pilots, which can be memorized much easier. One thing is clear: pilots can obviously not fly with an open manual on their laps, but have to call up a lot from memory while they control the aircraft, and therefore procedure logics and standardization is essential.
All these individual steps are described in the so-called Operations Manual "B", Airbus calls it the "Flight Crew Operations Manual (FCOM)". The FCOM serves as a procedural instruction, while the checklists serve as a safeguard to ensure that all relevant systems have been (de)activated for the respective flight phase. There are also SOPs for the cabin crew, technicians, ramp agents and for the entire ground staff, including the employees at the check-in, at the gate, or at the security checkpoint. Even the radio communication between the cockpit and the air traffic controller, as well as the ground crew on the headset, is carried out with standard phraseology to prevent misunderstandings.
This results in the following advantages: In a company with thousands of employees, it doesn't really matter who you meet for the morning briefing or which team loads and unloads an aircraft. Even short-term changes to schedules do not lead to ambiguities about the way colleagues carry out their work. Every crew member and every ground worker knows exactly what the other is doing at all times, because all processes are carried out in the same or standardized manner, and each other´s procedures are known to the corresponding counterparty! Above all, this avoids confusion. It is ensured that all systems are checked, and ultimately security is guaranteed. If you correlate the word “security” with the word “quality”, you might already identify yourself within your own process in your respective industry/discipline. It is alarming how often the following sentence is heard: "No, I always do things differently, then the machine runs better!". Are all employees really always in control of current events in your company?
Finally, I would like to mention that primarily Airbus was a pioneer of standardization and modularization starting already in the early 1980s with the introduction of the A320 family (A318, 319, 320, 321, including NEOs) and the A330/340/350/380 series. Airbus introduced a wide range of standardized systems, modular principles and procedures so that cross-training from one to the other model can be completed in a few days. The pure architecture of the hydraulics may be different from model to model, but the cockpits and procedures are almost identical. Transfer all this to your production plant or your operation room! Does everything look standardized for you in terms of processes and layout?
So as you can see, Volkswagen is not the pioneer of the modular principle; Airbus tackled it 30 years earlier. You just had to think outside the box from other industries!
Questions for you to reflect: Are your procedures precisely described? Are your employees familiar with these procedures? Do your employees also abide to the procedures meticulously? Are your procedures largely standardized across all machines, operation rooms or services? Do you use the modular principle for developing new products or installing/operating new machines? If you can really answer all of these questions with "yes", then I am very impressed and I will do my next factory tour at your company. Promised!
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Factor 3 – Continuous Improvement Process (CIP)
Strangely, the term CIP is used very rarely in aviation, although it's principles are used extensively on a daily basis. The need to focus on continuous improvement is based simply on the fact that accidents can escalate to an irreversible stage and potentially result in the loss of human lives. Flying is a lot of fun, but it isn't a joke! For this reason, safety culture in aviation is not just written big, but huge! Interestingly, a relatively large number of the approaches mentioned above have been developed in parallel with LEAN management tools just as typically found in the production industry. At the end of the day, they have the same effect with a different name.
CIP in aviation is driven by the following factors:
An open feedback culture, coupled with a flat and yet noticeable hierarchy. Nobody should be intimidated to report strange occurrences. I would like to add the saying "your gut feeling tends to be right". Put yourself in the shoes of a young flight attendant on a day when there may be an additional instructor in the cockpit. On a day like this, it is essential to break the communication barrier due to whatever intimidation that flight attendant might feel due to the third occupant in the flight deck, as well as the training going on within the flight deck. It is essential to ensure that the cabin crew feel as welcome to pick up the interphone and contribute any input they consider important for the flight deck crew to know about, as they would on any other day, because perhaps that flight attendant´s input is precisely the one that could ultimately save lives in a particular scenario! This factor is extremely important in aviation. Many captains address this explicitly in their briefing, and airlines train this on a yearly basis in dedicated team communication training events (CRM). Team performance comes first!
A sophisticated safety and reporting system also plays a role in continuous improvement. This is explicitly not about denunciation. Rather, the system is broken down into legally required reports to aviation authorities, e.g. if you suffer a bird strike. But there is also the airline's internal system with a voluntary reporting philosophy. Employees can write reports anonymously. The essence of a safety management system is that we intend to highlight events and bring attention to WHAT happened, and not to WHO it happened, with the intention of learning from them and improving the company´s procedures and/or systems. In most airlines, the most prominent cases are published anonymously in a bulletin at defined intervals so that everyone can learn from them. In addition, of course, trends are worked out in order to be able to use them e.g. to respond with new procedural instructions or changes in the duty roster concept (in terms of fatigue reports). The reports must be processed in a given time frame and discussed with the employees.
Finally, as required by law, the official investigation results are published in the event of incidents or accidents, mostly in cooperation with the manufacturer. Here, too, trend analysis is of great importance, as can recently be seen very prominently in the Boeing 737 MAX's flight ban.
The above has the following advantages: Inclusion of all resources to avoid incidents and accidents. Implementation of a culture that deals openly with errors without punishing employees (except in the case of gross intent), but instead encourages them to report errors that have occurred in order to re-assess procedures and formulate changes to mitigate systematic errors.
Questions for you to reflect: Do the lowest employee levels also have the opportunity to give constructive feedback (personal or technical)? Do you also have a standardized feedback process with defined maximum periods for processing the reports? Who do you approach when errors occur, the employee or the wrong process? If you can answer all of the questions in the affirmative, if you always focus on the process and not on the employee when searching for errors, if you have also answered the questions with "yes" regarding all other success factors, then I can learn something from you rather than the other way round.
If not, then I look forward to the opportunity to exchange ideas with you and, if possible, to help you to improve. Contact me today and tell me about your challenges!
Sincerely,
Moritz Hirscher
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