Someone’s in the kitchen with IT: To ensure the just-in-time production of in-flight meals, the catering specialists from LSG Sky Chefs rely on the CBASE planning software. Lufthansa Industry Solutions has modernized the critical system with web apps.
The customer
The LSG Group is the world’s largest provider of on-board service solutions, including catering, in-flight retail and entertainment, service equipment and the associated logistics, as well as consulting and lounge operations. Thanks to its extensive expertise in culinary services and logistics, the company has succeeded in entering adjacent markets such as supplying retailers and providing services for rail operators. Its catering activities are managed under the brand name LSG Sky Chefs, which provides 628 million meals at 209 airports worldwide every year. The LSG Group generated consolidated sales of EUR 3.2 billion in 2016.
The challenge
The employees of LSG Sky Chefs are dedicated to preparing the highest-quality food and beverages. Behind the scenes, digital tools help make sure that everything goes smoothly. At their heart is the production planning and management system CBASE, which supports the entire catering process at LSG Sky Chefs – from planning and managing materials to preparing for production and billing. As a result, the application is particularly crucial to the company’s operations.
In June 2016, the external vendor SAP stopped developing the EA Server, a key middleware component of CBASE, necessitating major changes to the system architecture of CBASE.
Replacing the discontinued middleware required the development of new software modules and their integration into CBASE. Migrating the services linked to the previous middleware to a modern, future-ready technology was also a necessary step for the LSG Group from a strategic perspective.
On account of their long-standing experience with CBASE and in the catering industry, in addition to positive experience from past projects, the client turned to the IT specialists from Lufthansa Industry Solutions to make this transformation a reality.
The solution
Lufthansa Industry Solutions presented the client with a complete solution that would create a future-ready basis for LSG Sky Chefs’ strategically important planning and management system, including advice regarding the future system architecture and the software development itself.
Specialists developed three new, powerful web applications to adequately take over the processes performed by the outdated components. The CBASEweb, CBASEapps and CBASEeHACCP modules were developed using the Java Spring and Hibernate frameworks, which run in a Tomcat-based server environment.
These web-based applications now allow LSG Sky Chefs employees to access essential CBASE functions from their desktops and from mobile devices when they are out of the office, speeding up processes in the day-to-day catering business.
Because CBASE will continue to be supported by an in-house team, Lufthansa Industry Solutions made sure that the experts from the LSG Group were closely involved in the project. They actively participated in the process and received in-depth training on the new technologies.
In view of how successful the project was, the client decided to continue working with Lufthansa Industry Solutions as its IT partner for the constant ongoing development of new components and CBASE as a whole.
The customer benefits
With the new web apps from Lufthansa Industry Solutions, CBASE gives the LSG Group an especially powerful and state-of-the-art solution. The production planning and management system now provides LSG Sky Chefs with even more flexible support for critical processes. The browser-based access allows employees to use CBASE modules from their desktops and from mobile devices when they are out of the office, making processes even more efficient. Eliminating the need for local installation and creating a central platform for updates reduces administrative effort significantly, cutting IT costs.
Thanks to the long-term cooperation agreement beyond the end of the project, the LSG Group has a skilled and experienced IT partner at its side for the constant enhancement of the system to meet the market’s changing needs.