At Lufthansa, as is the case with many other airlines, change is constant. To maximize the benefits from change, Lufthansa analysts from every corner of the organization are continuously evaluating new ways of working to increase revenues and decrease costs.

Crew Operations is no exception, and recently Carmen has assisted Lufthansa in evaluating and designing potentially new crew planning processes.

Dr Michael Frank, Project Manager, Future European Operations, said, “We wanted to find out if it was possible to design a new crew planning process that gives Lufthansa more flexibility and a shorter time-to-market, whilst also maintaining our high service level towards our 18,000 crew.”

To determine this, consultants from Carmen Business Consulting interviewed representatives from all parts of the planning process to understand the business drivers behind each step in the process. Based on the information supplied coupled with Carmen’s extensive experience in the area, a new process was then sketched and discussed with the planning organization. Carmen then ran numerous simulations using the Carmen planning suite to verify concepts.

Jens Kanstrup Kristensen, Director of Business Consulting at Carmen, said, “Nothing is easier> than designing planning processes that work well in theory, but fail in practice. So verifying the new concept with our tools and getting a high level of user buy-in is of key importance to us.”

At this stage whether or not the new planning concept will actually be implemented is yet to be decided. However, Lufthansa has already benefited from a number of quick-wins identified by Carmen to be implemented in the current planning process.

Dr Christoph Klingenberg, Executive Vice President, Future European Operations, said, “Carmen has proven to be a strong and competent partner. The combination of their deep domain knowledge and strong analytical capabilities was exactly what we needed for this job,” he concluded.