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Fully Optimised Baggage Handling Solutions
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These days, modern baggage handling systems offer a great deal more than a series of interlinked conveyors, sorters and x-ray machines that get bags from point A to point B. Just as the hardware technology and management information systems (MIS) have advanced over the years, so too have the requirements of Airport operators in the design, operation and maintenance of baggage handling and sortation systems.
Airport operators are giving serious consideration to the option of outsourcing the operation and maintenance of baggage systems to third parties. Such systems are increasingly viewed as essential to the smooth running of an airport, but, nonetheless, deemed a non-core activity and one that could perhaps be better managed outside. The case for outsourcing is even more attractive to operators following the recent development of integrating the design and installation of technically advanced hold baggage screening systems, at the deepest level, with the knowledge and resources required to optimise their operation and maintenance.
Typical of the 3rd arrangement involved in supplying and running a baggage handling system as a separate ‘business unit’ is a baggage handling facility at London Gatwick. Logan Teleflex (UK) Ltd designed and installed the system, while the facility is maintained and operated by AXIMA Services. Logan Teleflex combine the baggage handling capabilities with those of the previous Teleflex-Gallet and Logan Fabricom.
Both Logan Teleflex and AXIMA Services are increasingly working in collaboration to design, supply, operate and maintain baggage systems that fully meet the business requirements of airport operators.
Designing in service level benefits
A key advantage of the partnership is the delivery of significant service level benefits that can be tracked right back to the design process. By using the design contract data to improve service levels, critical operational information can be fed back before the design has reached the initial CAD stage. There is clear evidence that this seamless and constantly rotating feedback of data between the two companies is leading to improvements in the design of future baggage handling systems.
In the case of Gatwick, the two companies were able to manipulate the raw design data supplied during the project feasibility process in order to build in a wide range of guaranteed service levels. Fundamental to the primary measurement and success of the system has been the ability to meet “in system time” delivery.
According to Stephen Grant, Sales and Marketing Director for AXIMA Services, “Our primary target is IST (In-system-time)! That is we are contractually obligated to get bags from the input in-feed line to the output make-up chute in accordance with very exacting and demanding targets. If we over achieve, we gain financial bonuses and if we under achieve then penalties are levied against us. This and other targets are then recalibrated annually such that they reflect the efforts of our obligation to continually improve.”
The difference between SLA's and KPI's
Operational performance has become a crucial part of meeting Service Level Agreements (SLA) which go far beyond the traditional boundaries of Factory Acceptance Tests, Site Acceptance Tests (or confidence trials) and Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s). It is the introduction of SLA’s that sets apart the partnership. “There is a major difference between SLA’s and KPI’s.” notes Grant. ”SLA’s, which are agreed between ourselves and the airport, or an airline, in the case of TBF, are made up of a number of KPI’s. For example, system and subsystem availability, miss-directed bags and more. A KPI is delivered by the hardware, whereas an SLA delivery is the function of the hardware and the management of that hardware. In other words, we use and interpret the valuable data from the management information system to ensure lines are not only operable but bags are processed and sorted accurately in a matter of minutes.”
Behind the Gatwick facility are a portfolio of capabilities that have been strategically developed. Dave Reynolds, Sales Director for Logan Teleflex notes: “This has enabled the company to design baggage handling solutions using current technology in a modular form.”
A key module is the Bag2000 system which includes sort allocation, baggage reconciliation system and and management information system - and essentially encapsulates all the control, monitoring and management information systems required for baggage handling. Another module is 100% Hold Baggage Screening (HBS). Through the redesign of mechanical equipment, the adoption of tried and tested control technology and the resolving of the interface problems with smart screening machines, an HBS module has been developed and packaged as a complete product. The solution also includes the group's Model 700 powered tilt tray sorting machine, which has been developed to suit busy airports where fast sortation and handling of different baggage profiles are prerequisites.
Other system elements, like bag separation, bag suitability check, auto tag reading (ATR), manual coding and bag tracking can also easily be integrated depending on the facility requirements.
Both AXIMA Services and Logan Teleflex believe that airport operators no longer have to risk championing a baggage-handling project in the hope that it meets their level of expectation. Instead, it is the contractors that give guarantees to continually deliver service improvements throughout the life of the system.
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