For sustainable competitive power:

UNINTERRUPTED INNOVATION

TAV Airports Holding owes its existence to an innovative style of thinking, It aims to spread this understanding to the whole of the TAV Family, to turn innovation into a corporate reflex while achieving continuity in innovative thinking. The Proposal Award System, which has been practiced for a long time, is among the instruments serving this purpose.

Organizations that are able to spread an innovative approach throughout their processes and therefore to make a difference in the services they provide pull out ahead of the competition. Organizations that have acquired the reflex of innovation maintain their positions in the list of most profitable and productive companies and despite economic circumstances they continue advancing.

But what does innovation, seen as a kind of magic wand, actually mean? Most important of all, is an innovative style of thinking an innate ability?

Energy savings via light sensors The light sensors idea, put into practice at TAV Esenboğa under the Proposal-Award System, is an implementation that has decreased costs in all the terminals operated by TAV Airports. The bridge lights were formerly on all night long. Employees at TAV Esenboğa suggested the installatıon of a light sensor system and, when savings were calculated, the financial gains could not be ignored. The system was therefore immediately implemented. MEHMET MAZMAN – Chief of Bridge Services / TAV Esenboğa Behind: YILMAZ ÖZTÜRK – Bridge Services Officer / TAV Esenboğa BARIŞ İLTER – Bridge Services Officer / TAV Esenboğa

Innovative thinking is not an innate ability! Individuals develop this ability through their experiences and attentive observers can learn to view life through “improvement and development” glasses and to acquire an innovative thinking style.

The word “innovation” is sometimes misunderstood as “creativity.” Although there have been attempts to translate it into Turkish, as the corresponding Turkish words did not express innovation sufficiently, all authorities are now preferring to use the original word.

Innovation is the process by which new ideas are transformed into a commercial benefit. Innovation concerns creating the future and achieving sustainable and profitable growth. Innovation is a process of diffusion and of collection. At first many ideas are put forward and then these ideas are selected, focused on and the ones that will serve company objectives in the best way are turned into projects. In this sense innovation consists of the realization hand in hand of uncontrolled creativity and disciplined business projects. The effort to turn an idea into profit requires the participation of many units of a company. The Proposal-Award System practised at TAV Airports is the result of such a search.

The Suggestion Award System

TAV Airports Holding and its affiliates have established throughout the organization a Suggestion Award System where ideas proposed by staff are shared and assessed. The system is implemented both via boxes and forms located in areas where staff operate and by sending ideas through e-mail. Staff can submit proposals that they believe will increase productivity, reduce cost and improve the process to the evaluation team, via the said channels. Once a month the evaluation team gathers all the suggestions, analyzes their applicability and decides whether suitable ones should be implemented. At this point the owners of the proposal can set up a team for the implementation of the proposal and the team carries out the necessary feasibility studies, investment and work to put the proposal into practice.

Conceptualization Point:

Innovation is the application of new ideas which yields a commercial benefit. In other words, it means combining creativity with commercial dexterity. It is not sufficient to simply discover the wheel: It means putting it on cars, producing and marketing them, creating a demand for them and being able to sustain productivity in the most efficient, rational way possible while continually redesigning them.

“Chiller-Tower Automation” has yielded a 10% savings for TAV Izmir TAV Izmir has been implementing the Proposal-Award System since the beginning of 2007. Suggestion boxes have been set up In various locations throughout the International Terminal of the Izmir Adnan Menderes Airport--as in other terminals--so that all employees can send their proposals to the Proposal Evaluation Committee without any intermediaries. The number of suggestions made up to the present by staff at Izmir has reached 250. The implementation of the “Chiller-Tower Automation” suggestion has yielded a savings of 10% in the use of electrical energy for the cooling groups. TAV Izmir Mechanical Equipment Engineer Tarkan Baba, who made the suggestion, emphasizes that it would be wrong for him to take the credit on his own for this proposal. He says, “It was based on team work in the real sense of the word. As a team we always seek ways to practice our work more economically. During this search we saw the results of research conducted in the US. According to this research, it was predicted that if during the reduction of capacity of the Chiller the temperature of the cooling water is also reduced, up to 20% savings can be achieved in energy. We tried this manually and ran a couple of tests. Then we turned it into a system through an automation set-up. Following the automation, we have achieved savings of around 10%. We are proud to have made such a contribution to our organization and we believe that we are doing what is required by the job. Since our department creates 60% of the energy used in the terminal, we are going to continue looking into different ways of increasing productivity and decreasing costs via new proposals.”

From left to right: MEHMET KEMAL AKBAYRAK Mechanical Equipment Technician / TAV Izmir KADİR DEMİR Mechanical Equipment Technician / TAV Izmir TARKAN BABA Mechanical Equipment System Engineer / TAV Izmir ŞÜKRÜ ŞAHİN Mechanical Equipment Technician / TAV Izmir NEJDET MUTLU Mechanical Equipment Technician / TAV Izmir