Driving Innovation in Aviation –Triangle of Cooperation
According to the Business Dictionary innovation is: “The process of translating an idea or invention into a good or service that creates value or for which customers will pay. (…). In business, innovation often results when ideas are applied by the company in order to further satisfy the needs and expectations of the customers.”
That is also the principle we follow within EXSYN. Sander de Bree, founder of EXSYN, recently explained in an interview with Aircraft IT: ‘Implementing or developing solutions for the sake of developing or implementing can never be the main driver. In everything we do we always ask ourselves the question, “how will this benefit an airline”'. However, in order to be successful in driving innovation in aviation cooperation is the key. Over the last 5 years we have developed a strong cooperation between our customers and partner universities, the TU Delft and University of Applied Science Amsterdam. Regularly we welcome Master Students of the Aerospace Engineering course of the TU Delft and Aviation Engineering Honours Students of the University of Applied Science Amsterdam. The cooperation between our customers, partner universities and the EXSYN-Team, we see it as a triangle of innovation success:
In this setting, our customers use their knowledge and defined attributes (such as motivation, commitment, etc) in order determine feasibility of an idea with EXSYN and test desirability of the innovation for the market with academic input. Researchers on their turn use their skills together with the EXSYN team to proof viability of an innovative idea and their attributes (such as enthusiasm, co-operative and self-motivation) in order to test desirability of an idea with actual airlines and MRO’s in the industry. EXSYN brings its knowledge and skills in order to determine feasibility of certain innovations with its customers and test viability with the academic input.
Cooperation lies in the roots of our company: EXSYN is the acronym for EXploring SYNergy; We do not only explore synergie but also create synergy. In driving innovation we strive for the best synergy between our customers, partner universities and us. This has resulted in innovative research projects and solutions. Avilytics was one of the first solutions that was developed based on the triangle of innovation success. By now Avilytics consists of five different suites specifically designed for aviation Engineering & Maintenance departments. The cooperation continuous for additional features and suites based on the needs of our customers and including latest technological developments. For instance, later this year we will release a brand-new function that will allow to predict likeliness of task card findings during aircraft heavy maintenance.
Another example of this highly successful triangle is the development around Robotic Process Automation, in short RPA. An RPA bot mimics the actions a human employee would do and does so in the same user interface of the system. Think of data entry into an ERP system, archiving of files or downloading data. Through this cooperation EXSYN established a unique scoring system specifically designed for the aviation environment to identify the processes that are highly valuable to apply RPA to. In general, RPA proof-of-concept can be accomplished within a few weeks without impacting the existing IT infrastructure and proofing a quicker ROI compared to traditional IT projects.
