Our understanding of Digitalization: Technology, Action, and Mindset

By leveraging state-of-the-art technologies, strategically adjusting processes, and fostering a digital mindset, Fraport is shaping the future of airports and contributing to the industry's digital transformation. In addition to technological advancements, Fraport places great emphasis on knowledge transfer and the introduction of new working methods to continuously develop the entire group.

Fraport focuses on four core processes: the passenger process, the flight process, the cargo process, and the infrastructure process. Within these processes, the Fraport group targets specific action areas to adopt a customer-centric perspective, optimize the value chain, and make processes more adaptable and faster.

Fraport’s Digital Factory is a virtual organizational unit – an in-house “solution partner” – staffed by experts on digitalization and other topics. It helps Fraport’s business units at Frankfurt Airport and elsewhere in the world resolve problems. Over the course of a three-month project phase, a team of experts develops a (usually technical) solution in the form of a “minimum viable product” (MVP).

Here the strategic goals are to strengthen the Fraport Group’s digital maturity and drive the digitalization of our customer processes. Attention initially focuses on identifying the companies in the world that are best at doing whatever is involved. Then the solution is introduced at Fraport within the scope of a collaborative value creation approach. This greatly accelerates the pace of innovation while ensuring that globally leading solutions are applied.  

The Digital Factory is well-networked and relies on close collaboration and strong partnerships and this way Frapot has access to a global network of technology companies and startups for quickly generating possible solutions. The partners in Germany include         House of Logistics and Mobility (HOLM) GmbH,        House of Digital Transformation,        Hessen Trade & Invest GmbH        and the        Plattform für Innovation in Deutschland (PFID).

Colleagues from other parts of the company can also join these projects as temporary virtual team members. This lets them acquire new knowledge and methods and disseminate them within the organization and corporate group.

Another of the Digital Factory’s goals is to quickly spot emerging innovations in the market and pave the way for the introduction of convincing solutions at Fraport AG.