As air travel rebounds and aviation enters a new era, Changi Airport Group (CAG) is making a quantum leap forward in airport innovations and developing deep innovation capabilities to remain relevant to its customers.  

To cultivate an environment that encourages innovation, CAG adopted a unique ‘4D+i’ work approach to speed and scale up innovation since January 2023. Transforming its way of working to balance ongoing work and projects for four days (‘4D’) in a week with dedicated innovation (‘i’) Fridays. This means all employees can make time to develop ideas, refine concepts, and build new capabilities through planned programmes such as brown bag talks, ideathons, pitch days, and innovation exchange platforms. 

CAG employees across job functions now have time on Fridays to discuss new innovation ideas

To date, over 70% of its 2,000 employees have suggested new ideas and/or formed teams to work on innovation projects and test new ideas. The strategy of setting aside bandwidth for innovation gives teams across CAG more opportunities to ideate and collaborate, unlocking fresh ideas and the potential for novel solutions. 

Driving this innovation culture in CAG is its Innovation Team and the various champions from the operating units. They shape processes and organise resources to speed up innovation on ground. CAG has also been building up in-house capabilities in various technology domains such as Artificial Intelligence, Robotic Process Automation, and Sensors & Machine Learning Lab to serve internal enablers for enterprise innovation, experimentation, and development. 

Justina Tan, CAG’s Executive Vice President, Corporate, People & Culture, said, “Our pursuit to be one of the most innovative companies in Singapore starts with inspiring our people to have a growth mindset, to constantly redefine the norms and push the boundaries of what’s possible. True innovation stems from a culture that values creativity and embraces calculated risk-taking. CAG recognises that some of the most groundbreaking solutions emerge when employees are empowered to experiment with new ideas to drive CAG toward transformation. 

“The aviation industry presents a bright outlook with prospects for growth. CAG’s diverse lines of business and enterprise-wide ambition for innovation means there are boundless opportunities. We are looking for talents who are passionate to play a part in innovating and shaping the future of aviation, working in the world’s most awarded airport.”

Transforming employees’ career journey

The auto-dolly on trial in Changi’s airside, transporting baggage autonomously from the baggage handling area to the designated aircraft.

Some of Changi’s latest innovations being trialled or recently launched in the airport include the auto-dolly at the airside, baggage tracker, and the use of robotics. Innovation is not just a goal for the company, but also a personal transformation journey for each individual in CAG.

Desmond Woo, CAG's Senior Airport Emergency Officer, at Fire Station 2

Desmond Woo, a Senior Airport Emergency Officer, picked up coding at his own initiative. 

He said, “I observed that there was an opportunity to digitise some workplace processes which were manual in nature, as well as integrate separate legacy systems. Through the use of PowerApps, a manpower-related process was reduced to only five minutes from the previous three hours. As this solution was built in-house, it could be easily replicated for other fire stations too. The digitisation of many functions has now transformed many processes of the operations centre command. In addition, off-duty personnel can be alerted of emergencies and other ongoing activities through automated messages. The Airport Emergency Service also now has an application to manage vehicle fleets, where reports and messages are automatically generated if there is a defect. 

“This learning journey was certainly not easy at the start especially since I do not have a coding background, but I soon got the hang of it with the resources available. With many tasks that were part of our daily routine now completely automated, it frees up our time to focus on training and core firefighting skills.”

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