Language & Region
LSG Sky Chefs

LSG Sky Chefs
Fully automatically optimized PP/DS heuristics

Implementation Highlights

  • Development of an extremely high-performance, customer-specific PP/DS heuristic
  • Efficient scheduling of numerous orders, taking all critical factors into account
  • Setup and transport optimization as part of detailed planning
  • Realization of personnel deployment and availability planning
75
%
Shorter detailed planning
300000
Products
20000
Detailed planning products
3
Factories

The initial situation

LSG built a new regional production centre in the Czech Republic for the preparation of in-flight catering for LSG locations at German airports. The idea was to no longer prepare meals locally at the airport, but centrally in the Czech Republic.

To overcome the company's logistical challenges, LSG decided in favour of a full ERP on HANA implementation with detailed production planning PP/DS on ERP instead of managing detailed planning manually as before. CONSILIO's consulting and development expertise in the area of SAP PP/DS was required for this.

Project goals

  • Implementation of detailed production planning with consideration of shelf life
  • Compliance with the minimum shelf life of 48 hours until departure
  • Setup and transport-optimised planning, taking into account internal production and cooling processes
  • Routine scheduling in detailed planning

CONSILIO has provided us with a SAP detailed planning solution for the short-term horizon that takes all our special planning parameters into account.

Alexandra Wenninger, SAP-PP/DS-Projektleiter,
Service Factory OVC Production
LSG Sky Chefs GmbH

Challenge

The particular challenge for the catering company LSG is to meet an extremely short production time window due to several critical time factors.

On the one hand because of the short minimum shelf life of 48 hours for pre-cooked meals, and on the other because of the eight-hour delivery time from the Czech Republic to Germany, the necessary intermediate cooling steps and the order deadlines due to departure times, all of which must not be violated under any circumstances.

This only leaves a production time window of around 16 hours. Detailed planning must always be based on the fixed departure date, i.e. the goods must be ready on this date. Prior to this, multi-stage production takes place, in which the shelf life of preliminary products must also be taken into account.

Prior to the use of PP/DS, all of this was planned and implemented manually in Frankfurt and Munich. It was not until the regional production centre was built that in-flight catering was no longer to be prepared locally at the airport, but centrally in the Czech Republic and then delivered to both airports by shuttle.

Quickly explained: Heuristics SAP terminology

Planning function in production planning and detailed scheduling (PP/DS) that is used to solve planning problems for selected objects (products, orders, resources or line networks). Depending on the planning focus, a heuristic can carry out procurement planning for products or the sequencing of orders for resources. To solve problems, heuristics use rules that have been determined by experience or intuition. In contrast to optimisation, a heuristic does not aim to find an optimal solution by minimising a target function, but deals with specific planning problems using a rule-based approach. With this approach, very extensive problems (e.g. the planning of several hundred products) can be processed in a short time.

Source: SAP

CONSILIO solution approach

Due to the high number of orders, production planning was to be automated as far as possible. The introduction of PP/DS on ERP was planned in order to eliminate problems with detailed planning. CONSILIO developed a customised heuristic for LSG to accompany the use of PP/DS on ERP.

The heuristics enable efficient scheduling of the numerous orders, taking into account departure dates, shelf life and transport containers.

Due to the different food categories, such as kosher or vegan, there were several production lines for preparing the meals, all of which needed to be utilised as much as possible. On the preparation lines, the food was placed in bowls and on trays in a multi-stage process and then made available in roll containers.

The production of preliminary stages with longer shelf lives, such as sauces, was also part of the planning. The order sequences were also planned on the basis of shelf life, departure date, capacity availability on the line and shuttle scheduling to Munich and Frankfurt. In addition, staff deployment and availability planning was also carried out on the basis of detailed planning.

CONSILIO has developed a customised solution for the inheritance of shelf life based on primary requirements. The SAP standard is useless here because it only offers a single-level view of shelf life data. In multi-level planning with shelf lives, orders would be scheduled too early as a result.