Innovation hub in Singapore: a purpose-designed environment to foster innovation with our customers
The Singapore Innovation Hub was established to enable us to gain a deeper understanding of the operational needs of clients in the region, and to design new products and services that meet those specific requirements.
On one of the first projects called “Integrated Mobile Platform”, currently in development for airlines, Justin Wee, marketing manager for Avionics Services Worldwide at Thales for the Asia-Pacific region shares his views.
“This Integrated Mobile Platform project (IMP) deals with air-to-ground end-to-end connectivity solutions. Our aim is to bring significant operational savings for airlines by connecting the aircraft in real-time to airlines’ maintenance systems”.
“The airline industry is a time- and resource-driven industry where turnaround time is key for making the best use of an airline’s fleet. The shorter this turnaround time is, the greater the profitability for each aircraft. We believe there is room for major improvement for aircraft maintenance operations which often lack synergy between crew and maintenance teams. We believe that precious time is lost at every step of the airlines’ processes and that we can come up with innovative solutions to increase efficiency,”.
Justin adds: “We aim at connecting the aircraft to ground in real time via data management through onboard avionics and EFB (Electronic Flight Bag) applications. This connection will enable automated resource management based on aircraft issues, covering, for instance, the availability of spares during the stopover of an aircraft along with the necessary manpower to handle the repair or exchange. At the same time, the AOC will be able to conduct real-time tracking of all the actions taking place on each aircraft.”
Benefit of the Integrated Mobile Platform (IMP)
The IMP platform demonstrates the benefits of a fully connected aircraft and more efficient use of resources i.e. manpower and avionics spare parts, reduction in delays for improved turnaround time and more efficient tracking of work conducted on each aircraft. This demonstrator is showcased in Thales Singapore’s Innovation Hub.
See the chart below for comparison between traditional existing systems and the new Integrated Mobile System.