TAV Technologies Ground Handling Suite (GHS) is a set of fully integrated products offering comprehensive and end-to-end ground handling solutions

In aviation, aircraft ground handling or ground operations defines the servicing of an aircraft while it is on the ground and parked at a terminal gate of an airport. Airports are busy and dynamic, and unexpected events like flight delays can disrupt ground handling operations. Having efficient ground handling technologies at airports is vital for smooth airplane operations. These technologies help with quick and accurate baggage handling, passenger boarding, and aircraft refueling, reducing the time planes spend on the ground. This, in turn, minimizes delays and improves the punctuality of flights. This project covers the implementation of Ground Handling Suite (GHS) technology product for Turkish Ground Services (TGS), to improve TGS’s operations at İstanbul Grand Airport, one of the busiest airports in Europe. With GHS, TGS has become capable of efficient capacity planning, allocating resources such as gates, fuels, cleaning services and employees, and making decisions faster.

· Shortened Operation Times: Travel times to aircraft have been reduced by 34% for wide-bodied and 25% for narrow-bodied aircraft, improving turnaround times.

· Reduced Personnel Costs: Optimization of work distribution has led to a 28% reduction in the number of personnel required for in-flight cleaning operations.

· Increased Employee Satisfaction: Users have reported higher job satisfaction, boosting overall productivity.

· Decreased Operational Errors: Real-time monitoring and alerts have minimized operational errors.

· Enhanced Efficiency and Savings: The product's real-time data and integration capabilities have identified areas for cost savings and efficiency improvements.

In summary, TAV Technologies' Ground Handling Suite is a valuable solution that streamlines ground handling processes, resulting in cost savings, efficiency improvements, and increased employee satisfaction, ultimately benefiting airlines and airports.

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The design phase took a long time, because of the necessity to learn ground service companies’ work processes. A lot of brainstorming was carried out. Since the product should be available 24/7, many studies and innovations were conducted on performance. In addition, an optimizer was developed in the background to schedule tasks for staff every 30 seconds according to certain KPIs. The development, design, and testing challenged the team

TAV Technologies Ground Handling Suite (GHS) is a set of fully integrated products offering comprehensive and end-to-end ground handling solutions. It covers operational and business processes, from initial staff schedule preparations through real-time resource allocation, situation awareness, aircraft turnaround management, tactical allocations, and SLA monitoring to service recording and automated billing.

In dynamic environments such as airports, urgent changes, flight delays, or unexpected routings negatively affect ground handling operations. In addition to all those, scheduling employee shifts is a complex task determined by many criteria. Getting compliant with labor laws and operational rules, combined with the airports' goals, makes this planning even more difficult. A smart system that strengthens capacity planning, resource allocation, and airport employees' decision-making processes is necessary for such environments.

The scope of this project covers the functional and technical design, analysis, development, testing, and implementation of the TAV Technologies GHS for Turkish Ground Services' operations in one of the five largest airports in Europe. The airport currently manages approximately 1600 flights and 3500 resources such as gates, fuels, security, desks, ground personnel, carousels etc per day. GHS modules implemented in this project are:

Gantt Chart Planning module: Planning of tasks to the staff in operation. To help operators optimize staff management processes, the Gantt Chart of GHS - Real-time supports users in their decision-making processes. They are guided to act accordingly in time-critical operational cases via informative visual indicators, easy-to-notice warnings, color-coded resources, and rule-based flights. It provides daily operational visibility by generating task, resource, and flight historical documents.

Mobility module: The system provides bi-directional communication between employees and back-office people by task assignments to mobile devices in the hands of employees. Whatever a dispatcher does in the Real-time application is reflected directly in the mobile application and vice versa. A mobile application can be installed on any tablet or phone with the Android operating system.

Roster Management System: With the Roster module, users can create a roster that will cover the maximum workload, minimize the cost, and consider the balance between the personnel. They can manipulate the personnel who do not comply with the hour limits or day offs in the created roster and can send it to the real-time module.

Implementation of TAV Technologies' Ground Handling Suite (GHS) for Turkish Ground Services (TGS) aimed to control the costs by reducing overtime to a minimum and reducing the number of services and service location variability. Additionally, the presence of a mobile application in which employees can enter requests for leave and shift changes and where the prepared schedules can be quickly communicated to employees supports the digital transformation processes at airports.

Thanks to this implementation, employees can report their leave and shift changes through the mobile application and view their assigned days. Thus, the entire process has been moved to a digitally controlled point within a digital loop.

TAV Technologies' Ground Handling Suite enhances ground handling processes for airlines and airports, offering several key benefits:

· Efficiency and Cost Savings: By integrating processes and providing real-time data, the product helps identify areas for efficiency improvements and cost reductions.

· Resource Management: It supports critical resource management, including personnel and equipment, optimizing their allocation.

· Situation Awareness: Real-time information and alerts keep operations on track, ensuring quick responses to deviations from rules or performance criteria.

· Scheduling and Billing: Features like automated billing streamline tasks, reducing errors and enhancing efficiency.

The solution was first developed in Turkiye and implemented for one of the busiest airports in Europe, İstanbul Grand Airport’s operations but since it has been successfully deployed globally.