NEW BAGGAGE SYSTEMS HAVE A CHEQUERED HISTORY
Baggage systems are increasingly critical to successful openings of new airports and are becoming more and more complex as significant automation is introduced. In the United States, Denver introduced the largest installation to date of Destination Coded Vehicles (DCVs) on a track network controlled by complex computer systems. The airport opening was delayed in a very visible way. There have been many other spectacular, but perhaps less visible, incidents of failure of new baggage systems.
In Europe, both Heathrow and Charles de Gaulle are planning major new terminals with modern automated baggage systems. To meet competitive pressures of high performance, flexibility and reliability these, and other, systems will become increasingly complex.
This complexity results in new baggage systems which are either late into service or over-run budgets or do not operate adequately and sometimes all three of these. The opening is delayed and airport operations are compromised.
These project problems continue to arise because the baggage systems are not given adequate attention:
- The implications of the new technologies could be better understood and the resulting implementations better managed
- The time (and cost) to implement modern and competitive baggage systems is significant and reduced at peril
- Such systems are insufficiently trialed with airline operational processes and procedures before live use.
IMPLICATIONS OF NEW TECHNOLOGY REQUIRE BETTER UNDERSTANDING AND MANAGEMENT
The competition between airports is intense, both to achieve minimum connect time and to improve customer service. In Europe, there are several hubs competing for trans-Atlantic transfer traffic needing to handle short check-ins and reliable baggage delivery. Traditional baggage systems can only meet such demands at high costs. Automation, with higher speeds, fine sortation and reliable tracking is key to meeting competitive pressures but the implications of achieving this are rarely understood sufficiently well.
Operator involvement is integral to a good design
Operators have a key role to play and fall into one of two camps:
- They fear the new technology and become involved too late. This means the designers proceed but with a design that does not meet fully the operational requirement, or
- They over estimate the capability of the new technology and abdicate responsibilities to the designers who they trust to know better. Again the design may take advantage of the new technologies but does not fit with how the operators would wish to use the system.
In the early days of airport planning, it is difficult to fully envisage the future operation. Operations staff are frequently difficult to involve due to immediate and short term operational problems and designers are often left to their own resources to make provision for baggage systems based on experiences of other set-ups.
Education is crucial to raising understanding
Development of the operational requirement has to be a genuinely shared operation involving both designers and the operators. Both parties have to learn to recognise and understand the other's expertise and point of view. Education of the operators on the implications of new technology is essential to overcome their fears and raise their understanding. This can be achieved by teach-ins, visits to other airports, etc all coupled with a lot of patience from the 'experts'.
Evangelical designers, however, are dangerous. Designers must communicate both the upside and downside of a particular design solution. Realism is an essential feature of a good pragmatic working design. Workshops on operations and maintenance should be used to develop sound operational procedures for both daily running and fallback situations.
The operation has to be designed into the scheme and not made to fit around the final technical solution.
CONSTRAINTS THAT LIMIT THE DESIGN MUST BE MINIMISED
Frequently, the baggage system is not designed into the overall scheme, it is an add-on and the building layout, the budget provision and the timescales all impose excessive constraints on the new technology. The design of the baggage operation has to be run in parallel and be integrated with the design of the airport buildings to avoid unnecessary constraints of space, time and cost.
Space constraints can limit operation and performance
Baggage system designs fall into three groups:
- Centralised: where bags are delivered to a central hall, manually sorted and then delivered back out to their destination (eg Charles de Gaulle, Terminal 1)
- Modular: where each main location (or building) has its own baggage hall and these are interconnected by high speed transport (eg Heathrow, Terminal 5)
- Decentralised: where bags are taken automatically from the point of entry (eg check-in) to the point of departure (eg Denver, where centrally controlled DCVs deliver to the plane stand or Jersey, where intelligent carts are used)
Rapid advances in baggage system concepts with the growth in concept from centralised system through modular to decentralised, leave the baggage system designer inadequately prepared to prepare a suitable design. Building layouts are frequently finalised early in the design process such that overall layouts of buildings and taxiways are fixed before the design of the baggage system. These form major constraints on the operation and performance of the system; early integration is key.
Time constraints raise risks
Projects are run by construction managers who have a good understanding of the time to build terminal and other facilities. Their understanding of the implications of new generation baggage systems, the additional time required to design, develop and, particularly, commission new systems is less good. Construction managers have to understand how to develop a sensibly integrated programme that links the conclusions of design through to the start of commissioning allowing sufficient time for the baggage systems to be developed in parallel with the terminal facilities and with proper linkages.
Funding constraints limit opportunities for cost reduction
New generation baggage systems require higher capital costs in order to achieve lower operating costs. Funders' budgets have not always allowed sufficient allowance in the capital budget. This means the new generation design has to fit within the traditional allocation of funds. Estimates are often wrong requiring designs to be changed at a late stage to remain within budget. This can mean:
- Simplifications to the scheme (affecting performance and reliability)
- Accelerated timescales in order to achieve the construction schedule (to counter the lost time due to redesign).
SERIOUS TRIALLING OF BAGGAGE SYSTEMS BEFORE OPENING IS FUNDAMENTAL
Baggage systems are temperamental beasts and frequently have serious teething problems in the early days of operation. Problems arise when groundstaff and passengers behave in non standard ways. These problems have to be ironed out before live operation. In particular:
- Testing must be adequate and systems go in to service in a suitable state with underlying problems resolved
- Electro-mechanical baggage systems under computer control will, at times, fail - it is therefore necessary to plan and trial operating contingencies for this eventuality
- Serious trialling involving operators is essential to combine people with the systems and iron out the problems and build performance and reliability.
Testing has to be thorough
Testing is frequently executed with the aim of demonstrating that the systems work, not identifying the underlying problems that, if present, will inevitably arise in operation. Testing is carried out at two levels:
- Engineering tests, where specific checks and targeted diagnostics are executed in close liaison with the relevant system engineers
- System tests, where sections of the overall system are tested in various levels of performance and functional complexity following the four classic system integration steps, ie:
- Test individual functions at low volumes
- Integrate individual functions and areas (at low volumes)
- Increase volume to design capacity
- Test fallback and recovery processes.
Tests have to be designed to find faults and the design of these tests depends on the type of fault being sought.
Contingency plans need trialling as much as normal operation
It is not common practice to prepare operational procedures for all eventualities. Baggage systems, however, fail in many ways, but these ways can be grouped into a small number of scenarios.
So, better practice is to identify that small number of scenarios and operating modes which cater for all foreseen eventualities and train staff accordingly. Plans must cater for system failures and the switching between operating modes. Frequently however, these contingency plans underestimate variances within the scenarios and the operator's ability to switch between them.
It is therefore necessary to trial not only these scenarios but also the changes between them to verify that processes are adequate and timings acceptable. Trials are key to proving contingency scenarios, identifying variances and identifying missed scenarios all at the same time as training the operators and gaining their commitment to the new set-up.
Operational trials must simulate live operation as closely as possible
Operational trials should be run by operational staff with minimal input from the designers and builders. This is not a test of individual systems but of the entire system as a whole including staff, other systems and procedures (and bags!).
To ensure that live operations are rehearsed, volumes must be at, or slightly, exceed the actual traffic forecasts including variations in daily throughput. Trials have to be run by real operational staff, who will gain familiarity, recognise weaknesses and identify work arounds or improvements before paying customers suffer. Random failures to test contingency scenarios must be allowed to happen. Those that do not happen must be forced to happen such that operational staff learn how to deal with these in real time.
It is these trials that prepare the airport for opening and ensure the high level of customer service to stay ahead of the competition.
