Improvements for Operational Performance in Baggage Handling Systems regarding Mishandled Baggage - Verbeteringen voor operationele prestatie van bagage systemen met betrekking tot verkeerd afgehandelde bagage

(1)

Delft University of Technology Department of Marine and Transport Technology Mekelweg 2 2628 CD Delft the Netherlands Phone +31 (0)15-2782889 Fax +31 (0)15-2781397 www.mtt.tudelft.nl

This report consists of 62 pages. It may only be reproduced literally and as a whole. For commercial purposes only with written authorization of Delft University of Technology. Requests for consult are only taken into consideration under the condition that the applicant denies all legal rights on liabilities concerning the contents of the advice.

Specialization: Transport Engineering and Logistics Report number: 2016.TEL.8072

Title: Improvements for Operational

Performance in Baggage

Handling Systems regarding Mishandled Baggage

Author: V. Groeneweg

Title (in Dutch) Verbeteringen voor operationele prestatie van bagage systemen met betrekking tot verkeerd afgehandelde bagage

Assignment: literature Confidential: no

Supervisor: Dr. Ir. Y. Pang

(2)

T

U

Delft

Delft University of Technology Department of Marine and Transport Technology

Mekelweg 2 2628 CD Delft the Netherlands Phone + 3 1 (0)15-2782889 Fax +31 (0)15-2781397 www.mtt.tudelft.nl Student: V. Groeneweg Supervisor: Dr. Ir. Y. Pang Specialization: TEL Creditpoints (EC) 10

Assignment type: Literature Report number: 2016.TEL.8072 Confidential: NO

Subiect: I m p r o v e m e n t for Operational Performance in Baggage Handling S y s t e m s

regarding Mishandled Baggage

Airports are in general struggling to stay profitable while an increasing demand of flights results in the increase in pressure to handle more passengers. The baggage handling of airports can be considered to be one of the limiting factors to increase the capacity and to improve the service. With respect to the operational performance of the baggage handling systems, one key performance indicator is the number of mishandled baggage. The delayed, damaged and even lost baggage have significant impact to the service quality, the customer satisfaction, the compensation costs and the throughput of airports.

This literature assignment is to get insight in the causes of mishandled baggage concerning airports, airlines and baggage handlers. The survey will provide the state of the art solutions to improve the operational efficiency by reducing the amount of mishandled baggage in baggage handling processes. The main tasks of this assignment is the following:

• to understand the functions of baggage handling systems and the relative equipment » to study the indicators for the operational performance of baggage handling

• to explore the factors and the current trends of mishandled baggage

• to list the root-causes and to summarize the solutions for mishandled baggage

This report should be arranged in such a way that all data is structurally presented in graphs, tables, and lists with belonging descriptions and explanations in text.

The report should comply with the guidelines of the section. Details can be found on the website.

(3)

Improvements for Operational Performance in

Baggage Handling Systems regarding

Mishandled Baggage

(4)

(5)

Literature study V. Groeneweg

Abstract

The process of baggage handling tends to be one of the limiting factors for the extension of airports. Furthermore the need for travelling increases, as well as the world’s population. However the airlines are currently struggling to stay profitable, what results is a focus of airlines to reduce costs. Furthermore the competition increases between the airlines to get the loyalty from the passengers to being able to provide their flight.

As a result of this given trend, the airlines and airports focus to improve the throughput of the system, decrease the costs and improve the delivered quality to the customer. One of the important factors in the industry for this is the factor of Mishandled Baggage, because every mishandled bag increases the costs for the airline.

This research focuses on methods to improve the operational efficiency of a Baggage Handling System regarding Mishandled Baggage. The whole procedure of baggage handling is defined with the available equipment. The process boundaries are set to be from the moment the passenger is decoupled from the baggage at the check-in desk until the pick up at the reclaim area.

To see the operational efficiency of the system in a broader perspective its share in the overall operational performance is determined.

It is found that the term operational efficiency is often incorrectly interchanged with productivity and performance. The difference between these terms is defined clearly as performance being the overarching umbrella of all terms, what describes the performance against a benchmark or goal. Below this the profitability defines how well a company operates in the market concerning the input and output price, while productivity only takes into account the amount of output for the amount of used resources.

Efficiency and effectiveness are also important terms in these categories. The two terms split the factors for the different categories into two groups. Efficiency concerns about how well the resources are used, while effectiveness is about how a process fulfills the wish of the customer. The different methods of improvement are listed for the different causes what are in short:

 Human errors  Tracing errors  Fallen bags  Lack of resources

A wide variety of improvements is found for the process briefly it concerns:

 Training and creation of awareness of the check-in agents to prevent the wrong placement

of the bags into the system. This should also concern about the mistypes and correct attachment of the tags to the bags.

 RFID implementation to have better tracking capabilities, what results in less staff members

required to scan unreadable tags, while the ability of sorting optimized.

 The system design has to be such that it prevents bags from falling. Some examples are a

cart-based system, reduction of inclinations an declinations to an angle below 18° and by using slowly start and stop system consisting dynamic braking or clutches.

 Efficient use of resources by implementation of preventive maintenance and adjustment of

the flow principle from push to pull. This can be reached by having early arrival of bags in combination with an early baggage storage. Besides this the staff availability can be improved by (semi-)automation of the process and having shorter working days. To finalize the staff can work more efficient by improving communication and coordination.

(6)

Abstract ... 5 Table of Contents ... 6 List of Figures... 8 List of Tables ... 10 Glossary ... 11 1. Introduction ... 12 1.1 Problem description... 12 1.2 Research objective ... 12 1.3 Report outline ... 13 2. Analysis of the BHS ... 14 2.1 Traveling facts ... 14

2.2 Different kinds of Baggage ... 14

2.3 Flow diagram of a BHS ... 15

2.4 Equipment for different BHS functions ... 17

2.4.1 In-feed... 17 2.4.2 Identification ... 18 2.4.3 Screening ... 18 2.4.4 Transportation ... 18 2.4.5 Sorting ... 19 2.4.6 Storage ... 20 2.4.7 Make-up ... 20 2.4.8 Outlet ... 21 2.5 Stakeholders ... 22 2.5.1 Airport ... 22

2.5.2 Safety and security ... 22

2.5.3 Customers ... 23

2.5.4 Baggage system ... 23

2.5.5 Governments ... 24

2.6 Conclusion: Function and equipment of a BHS ... 24

3. Operational Performance ... 25

3.1 Definition ... 25

3.2 Performance of a BHS ... 27

3.2.1 Performance indicators of a BHS ... 27

(7)

4. Mishandled Baggage ... 30

4.1 MHB facts and trends... 30

4.1.1 MHB procedure ... 31

4.2 Categories of MHB ... 31

4.3 Conclusion: Facts and trends of MHB ... 33

5. Causes and improvements of MHB ... 34

5.1 Human error ... 34

5.1.1 Input faults ... 34

5.1.2 (Un)loading faults ... 35

5.1.3 Stolen bags ... 37

5.2 Tracing error ... 38

5.2.1 Causes of tracing errors... 38

5.2.2 Methods to reduce tracing errors ... 38

5.3 Fallen bags ... 40

5.3.1 Causes of fallen bags ... 40

5.3.2 Methods to reduce fallen bags ... 41

5.4 Lack of resources ... 42

5.4.1 Equipment planning ... 42

5.4.2 Staff availability ... 45

5.4.3 Communication ... 47

5.5 Conclusion: Causes and improvements ... 50

6. Conclusion ... 52

6.1 Recommendations ... 53

Bibliography ... 54

Appendix ... 59

I. Cluster of Black box approaches of a BHS ... 59

(8)

List of Figures

Figure 2.1: Black box visualization of a BHS (Lodewijks 2016) ... 15

Figure 2.2: Flow diagram based on the Delft Systems Approach (Lodewijks 2016) ... 16

Figure 2.3: A conventional check-in counter for baggage with a limited size (Lodewijks 2016). .... 17

Figure 2.4: The uDrop system at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport (“Wikipedia” 2016) ... 17

Figure 2.5: A Lufthansa counter for handling in special baggage(“Lufthansa” 2016) ... 17

Figure 2.6: Containers and carts transported by a truck between the airplane and the make-up area (“Zimbio” 2016) ... 19

Figure 2.7: A belt conveyor what transports bags (“Flight Deck Aviation” 2016) ... 19

Figure 2.8: A spiral chute to safely transport bags levels down (“Safeglide” 2016) ... 19

Figure 2.9: A pusher sorting system (“Vanderlande” 2016a) ... 19

Figure 2.10: A vertical sorter (“Vanderlande” 2016b) ... 19

Figure 2.11: A tilt tray sorting arrangement (“Airport Technology” 2016) ... 19

Figure 2.12: Buffer lanes ... 20

Figure 2.13: Automated storage and retrieval system (“Deutsche Bank” 2016) ... 20

Figure 2.14: Costs of a bagstore compared to buffer lanes (Kohlmann 2012) ... 20

Figure 2.15: Manual loading at Changai airport (“TNP” 2016) ... 21

Figure 2.16: Semi-automated make-up with Stack@Ease (“AviationPros” 2016a) ... 21

Figure 2.17: Automated loading robot (“Vanderlande” 2016c) ... 21

Figure 2.18: Loading of baggage from laterals (“Vanderlande” 2016d) ... 21

Figure 2.19: Loading baggage from a carrousel (“Vanderlande” 2016d) ... 21

Figure 2.20: Loading from chutes (Lemmen 2016) ... 21

Figure 2.21: Main stakeholder’s airport (Dijks et al. 2010) ... 22

Figure 3.1: Five performance objectives (Slack et al. 2001) ... 25

Figure 3.2: The tirple P model (Tangen 2005) ... 26

Figure 4.1: Trend of passengers and bags mishandled (SITA 2015) ... 30

Figure 4.2: Reasons for delayed bags in 2014 ... 31

Figure 4.3: Breakdown in 2013 of mishandled bags ... 31

Figure 4.4: Possible process errors (Lemmen 2016) ... 32

Figure 4.5: Pie chart of causes of MHB, based on (Alsyouf et al. 2014) ... 32

Figure 5.1: Check-in agent attaches bag-tag (“Allwidewallpapers” 2016) ... 35

Figure 5.2: Unloading and prioritization (McCartney 2014) ... 36

Figure 5.3: In-feed of bags from airplane (Lodewijks 2016) ... 36

Figure 5.4: Bag transported across the apron (“Planit” 2016) ... 36

Figure 5.5: eTag tracing device (“Futuretravelexperience” 2016a) ... 37

Figure 5.6: Bag delivery service at Gatwick airport(“Futuretravelexperience” 2016b) ... 37

Figure 5.7: Concept with reclaim lockers (Boute 2016) ... 37

Figure 5.8: Employees scanning baggage by hand (Lemmen 2016) ... 39

Figure 5.9: Vulnerable long barcode tag ... 39

Figure 5.10: RFID tag in a barcode tag (“AviationPros” 2016b) ... 39

Figure 5.11: ICS of vanderlande (“Vanderlande” 2016e) ... 41

Figure 5.12: Spacing dots at Athens airport (IATA 2012b) ... 41

Figure 5.13: Inclination in a BHS (“Clxengineering” 2016) ... 41

Figure 5.14: Example earliness distributions before and after 9 A.M. (T.S.A. 2007) ... 43

Figure 5.15: Flight arrival waves at A.A.S. (“KLM” 2016) ... 43

Figure 5.16: Throughput in 24 hours for a BHS (Lodewijks 2016) ... 44

Figure 5.17: Throughput of bags for a flight with current system and early arrival (Beumer Groep 2012) ... 44

Figure 5.18: Vacuum lifting of bags ... 46

Figure 5.19: Exoskeleton used at Japanese airport (Weller 2015) ... 46

Figure 5.20: Automated unloading equipment of Moderniek (van Kleef 2015) ... 46

Figure 5.21: Delay distribution(T.S.A. 2007) ... 47

(9)

Figure: I.A—1 The black box of the baggage flow at an airport (Kohlmann 2012) ... 59

Figure: I.B—1: SADT/ IDEF0 of a BHS (van der Lande 2012) ... 59

Figure: I.B—2 General explanation of an IDEF0 approach (Lukszo 2016) ... 59

Figure: I.C—1: Proper model visualization (Lodewijks 2016) ... 60

Figure: II.A—1: Flow chart of a BHS (Bentvelsen 2015) ... 61

Figure: II.B—1: Available baggage routes at A.A.S. (A.A.S. 2012) ... 61

Figure: II.C—1: Flow chart of a BHS (Kohlmann 2012) ... 62

(10)

List of Tables

Table 3.1: Factors affecting the productivity of a BHS ... 28 Table 3.2: Factors affecting the profitability of a BHS ... 28 Table 3.3: Factors affecting the performance of a BHS ... 28

(11)

Glossary

A.A.S. Amsterdam Airport Schiphol BHS Baggage Handling System CAPEX Capital Expenditure

CDC Cargo Doors Closed

EBS Early baggage storage Fibag First Bag on belt FSC Full-Service Carrier FTE Full Time Equivalent

IATA International Air Transport Association ICS Individual Carrier System

Irrate Irregularity rate, number of mishandled bags per 1.000 passengers KLM Royal Dutch Airlines; an international aviation company

Labag Last Bag on belt LCC Low Cost Carrier

MHB Mishandled Baggage

OOG Out Of Gauge

OPEX Operational Expenditure PIR Property Irregularity Report Prio Priority

RFID Radio-Frequency Identification ROI Return on investment

T2T Tail to Tail

(12)

1. Introduction

Over the past decades the airline industry has grown enormously, this is caused by the general economic growth over the world and the increase of world population. This increasing demand results in more pressure on the existing airports to handle more and larger airplanes in a shorter period of time. The airline industry is struggling to maintain its profitability, so it pushes airports to provide short handling times against low prices (Tully 2014). This forces the airports to make the passenger and baggage handling more efficient. Although many improvements are implemented it turns out that baggage handling is still one of the biggest bottlenecks for an efficient air transport business model (SITA 2016).

1.1 Problem description

Airports tend to improve the performance of the Baggage Handling System (BHS) what for example is done by a reduction in the costs, decrease in handling time and improvements in handling quality. An aspect what is of increasing importance for BHSs is the rate of Mishandled Baggage (MHB). This factor describes the amount of delayed, damaged or lost bags per 1000 handled bags. The factor is of urge for airlines because it displays on one side the costs of faults and, related to that, the delivered quality to the passenger. With the airlines struggling to stay profitable the costs are becoming more important, besides this the airlines aspire to provide a better quality to keep the loyalty from the passengers. The amount of mishandled bags has significant impact on the costs and the delivered quality to the passenger. This makes the MHB an important factor for airlines and airports.

Airports and airlines tend to decrease the amount of mishandled bags based on data provided about global mishandling rates. However there is lack of the specific causes for mishandled bags and no clear solutions are available for managements to decrease amount of mishandled bags.

1.2 Research objective

This research focuses on airports, airlines and baggage handlers in general to get insight in possible causes of MHB in order to improve the systems to overcome those causes. Every airport requires its own specific research to get full insight in the problem, with this research a general framework of causes and solutions is provided. The framework can be used to work out improvement concepts. The report aims to answer the following research question

 What are state of the art solutions to improve the Operational Efficiency of a Baggage Handling Systems by reducing the number of Mishandled Baggage?

This main research question is answered by answering the following set of sub-questions in the different chapters. The answers for the sub-questions are provided at the end of every chapter, while the answer on the main question is the combination of the sub-questions.

Chapter 2a  What are the functions of the BHS and what are solutions to fulfill these functions?

Chapter 2b  What are the stakeholders of a BHS and what are important factors for them concerning the function and design of BHS?

Chapter 3a  What is operational performance and how are Efficiency and Effectiveness related to this?

Chapter 3b  What are key performance indicators for a BHS?

Chapter 4  What is the MHB factor and what are current trends in this?

Chapter 5  What are factors affecting the MHB of an airport and what are state of the art solutions to improve them?

(13)

1.3 Report outline

The chapters are structured following the order of the sub-questions. The reader who is not familiar with BHSs can get insight in the baggage handling process and available equipment in chapter 2. Following on this chapter 3 describes theoretically the definition of operational performance and how the factor of MHB fits in this. Some background information on the factor of MHB is provided in chapter 4 to get to know the current state and global trends. Finalizing the exact causes for MHB are categorized and listed in chapter 5 with improvements that are already advised or applied on existing BHSs.

(14)

2. Analysis of the BHS

The first step in the research is to understand the system. Within the airport the BHS is one of the most important factors for the limited capacity of an airport. Previously baggage handling did not exist and passengers had to walk their bags to a waiting airplane and there it would be slung into the hold (Vickers et al. 1998). Baggage handling started as service to the passenger and over time it changed to a requirement for the airplane handling (Bentvelsen 2015). Nowadays the handling is more complicated with different kinds of baggage as described in Chapter 2.2. The process of handling becomes more and more complex what is explained with the flow diagram in Chapter 2.3. The complexity and size of the systems increase what is related to the regulations as the requirement of screening all the bags after 9/11 (A.A.S. 2012). The different tasks of the BHS can be fulfilled by different equipment shown in Chapter 2.4, the choice of the equipment is based on the airport type and the current and future requirements of the stakeholders (Chapter 2.5)

2.1 Traveling facts

In order to understand the system, the current state and trends of the industry are important to be identified. The number of passengers is constantly increasing, in 2015 it was expected to have 3.54 billion passengers transported by the airlines (SITA 2016). Continuing population growth and urbanization in Asia and Africa is said to be the main driver to increased demand for air transport (“UN” 2016). In combination with the economic growth and a desire to see more the world the industry is expected to grow to transport seven billion passengers in 2035 (SITA 2016). In terms of baggage it is expected grow respectively from five billion to ten billion bags from 2012 to 2035 (Duren 2011).

2.2 Different kinds of Baggage

A variety of baggage is handled by the BHS, but mainly the process of can be grouped on different airplanes, bag-shapes and origin and destination. Firstly the input differs when handling wide- or narrow-body airplanes. For wide-body airplanes the baggage is loaded into Unit Load Devices (ULDs), as also called containers, whereas for narrow-body airplanes the baggage is unloaded from carts into the hold. The loading process differs in the handling procedure where wide-body loading is highly mechanical and for narrow-body labor intensive (van der Lande 2012).

Secondly the handling differs for the different kinds of destinations of the baggage. In total there exist three types of baggage flow: check-in baggage, transfer baggage and reclaim baggage.

Check-In Baggage

This is the baggage with the current airport as the origin. The passenger delivered the bag at the check-in desk and after that the passenger and the bag are separated until the passenger arrives at the reclaim area. A special type of baggage is the oversized baggage, also called Out Of Gauge (OOG) baggage, what is handled separately.

OOG-baggage

Some baggage cannot be handled by the BHS, because of an exceptional shape or higher weight (more than 40 kilo). Examples can be skis, but also animals what require special guidelines and this. That is why this baggage is manually made-up for the transport to the airplane by the personal. At some airports there are special check-in and pick-up areas for OOG-baggage.

(15)

Transfer Baggage

The transfer baggage increases pressure on the capabilities of the BHS, because it goes through the whole baggage handling process. Different levels of urge are given to transfer bags to easily distinguish the available handling time span. The given groups are for Amsterdam Airport Schiphol (A.A.S.) (Jochems 2015).

 No special label (> 90 minutes)

 Short Connection Baggage (SCB), (<90 minutes)

 Baggage what can be handled by the system with extra care to pass its short processing

time.

 Tail to Tail (T2T) Baggage, (<65 minutes)

 When the connection time is really short it gets a special treatment what means that the

baggage is brought by truck from one airplane to the other.

 HUB (Group larger then 25)

 If a large group of baggage all has the same transfer those bags are handled as one batch

to improve the transfer process.

Reclaim Baggage

Reclaiming of baggage takes place at the airport of arrival where the passenger and bag come together in the reclaim area. The process itself does not consist of many steps, but there has to be taken into account that the baggage arrives in the right order. This is related to the following reclaim baggage types (Jochems 2015):

 Regular reclaim baggage: No specific order required of arriving at the reclaim area

 Priority reclaim baggage: Some passengers have priority ticket what gives them the right of having their bags as first on the reclaim belt.

2.3 Flow diagram of a BHS

The different baggage flows as described in Chapter 2.2 can easily be distinguished in the process diagram of the BHS. All of the different functions are separated and fulfill together the main function of a BHS, namely:

“A BHS is a type of transport system installed in airports and which transports checked baggage from ticket counters to areas the bags can loaded onto airplane. A BHS also transports checked baggage coming from airplane to baggage claims or to an area where the bag can be loaded into another airplane(Lodewijks 2016).”

Black-box approach

This process can firstly be seen as a black box to consider the right input and output combined with their requirements (Lodewijks 2016). The diagram visualizes everything what goes in and out the system combined with the used resources and the measured performance. Different approaches can be found in literature as listed in Appendix I. It is chosen to show the black box from Figure 2.1, what from its simplicity easily visualizes the process of baggage handling.

(16)

Flow-diagram

As for the black box different approaches can be found in literature to visualize the process in a flow diagram, what is worked out in appendix II. For this report is chosen to use the diagram from Figure 2.2, what shows a clear separation between the passenger and the baggage flow. The reason for choosing this one is its ease in understanding the system.

From the baggage handling point of view, the passenger is of influence only at the moment he or she drops the bag into the system. For this reason the green arrows (passengers) go around the BHS functional box. The only important factor related to the passenger’s process is the fact that is checked if the passenger is boarded to the flight, before departure. This to ensure the bag does not travel without the passenger. In short the three different baggage flows can be described as following:

 Check-in Baggage: The passenger drops of the baggage at the (self) check-in desk and the baggage goes into the screening area where the bag is checked for explosives. Bags can arrive before the make-up time what means that those need to be temporary stored. When the make-up area opens the carts or containers are filled with the bags for the flight. Finally the bags are loaded into the airplane by the ground handlers.

 Transfer Baggage: This baggage goes through almost the whole BHS. The bag is unloaded from the inbound (arrived) flight and transported into the BHS. At this point the baggage is separated from reclaim baggage. Often the transfer baggage is located close to the take-out point of airplane to accelerate the unloading process. It is not required by law to screen all the transfer baggage, so it depends on the airport where the transfer baggage is merged into the Check-In flow (Lemain 2002). From the diagram it can easily be seen that transfer baggage has the most process steps, what causes transfer baggage in being the most critical baggage for the BHS (Jochems 2015).

 Reclaim Baggage: This baggage is the easiest to handle, because it is just transported and put into the reclaim area. At this point the passenger and the bag are again brought together and the journey of passenger and the bag ends.

(17)

2.4 Equipment for different BHS functions

To have an understanding of the system an overview of available equipment is given for the functions from the flow-diagram of Figure 2.2. Information for this part is gathered from different literature (IATA 2004; A.A.S. 2012; Kohlmann 2012; Vickers et al. 1998; Bentvelsen 2015; Lemain 2002)

2.4.1 In-feed

The main function of the check-in procedure is the feed-in of the baggage into the BHS, besides this it is to identify the passenger and hand-over the boarding pass. From the moment of check-in the airline is responsible for the bag. Summarizing, the check-in is required for (Lemain 2002):

 Registration and labeling of bags

 Weighing and inning of costs for extra baggage  Hand-over boarding pass

It is possible that the check-in procedure is performed on-site at the airport terminals or off-site at for example the parking lot or at railway stations. For off-site in-feed it is required to have a secure area likewise it is at the airport. The equipment for the in-feed can be split in the following categories:

Check-in counters

The conventional method of the in-feed is a counter with an check-in agent, as from Figure 2.3. The passenger hands over the desired documents and the personal checks the baggage. The system has typically two or three conveyor belts to weigh and transport the bags to the collection conveyor what goes to the screening area.

Self-service check-in

In response of high labor costs several airports replace the traditional check-in counters for self-service check-ins. This equipment checks any priority passes and the identity of the passenger. The output of this device is the boarding pass of the passenger, wherewith the passenger can drop-off its baggage at the drop-off point.

Baggage drop-off point

A wide variety of drop-off points are available, from what one is shown in Figure 2.4. Typically the device asks for the boarding pass, weighs the bag an prints the bag-label. The passenger attaches this to the bag where-after the bag continuous to the screening area.

OOG-Counter

Large-, heavy- or irregular shaped baggage is defined as OOG-baggage. It depends on the airport what is defined as OOG-baggage, and how it is handled. It can for example be handled by a separate OOG-Counter and OOG-system, or it can be brought directly to the airplane. As guideline is given that when the volume of OOG-baggage is ≥10% it should be considered to provide an automated OOG handling (IATA 2004). An example of an OOG-counter, where skis are delivered is seen in Figure 2.5.

Figure 2.3: A conventional check-in counter for

baggage with a limited size (Lodewijks 2016). Figure 2.4: The uDrop system at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport (“Wikipedia” 2016)

Figure 2.5: A Lufthansa counter for handling in special baggage(“Lufthansa” 2016)

(18)

2.4.2 Identification

The right routing and monitoring of the bag is done by the tracking the bag through the system with the bag tag. This tag, also called license plate by the IATA (International Air Transport Association), can be a barcode or an RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification) label as defined by the IATA resolutions 1740b and 1740c.

Barcode

The standard method of identification is the barcode. The barcodes are scanned with a barcode reader, camera system or a 3-imagining system. The system has problems when the tag is folded or below the bag what causes a misread, when this occurs the tag needs to be scanned by an operator.

RFID

The technology of RFID tags is more reliable, because it has a reading rate of almost 100% (Madsen 2016). The implementation of the RFID at airports is still difficult, because airlines do not want to pay the extra costs of the RFID tag, while the number of lost bags is expected to decrease with RFID implementation.

Pattern recognition

A methodology without the requirement of a tag is the ability to recognize the bag by its shape and color. This is possible since every bag is unique, disadvantage of this system that it is not able cope with the deformation of bags.

2.4.3 Screening

As stated earlier all of the hold baggage need to be screened for explosives. Various methods for screening are manual checking, x-ray scanning, tomography scanning and diffraction scanning. The placement of the screening in the system and the strictness depends on the vision of the airport combined with countries regulations. A short list of the possibilities currently chosen by some airports (Bradley 2010):

 Off-airport screening (City centre, hotels)

 Before approach of check-in (enter terminal, in front of check-in)  At or immediately after the check-in desks

 Downstream in the BHS before the make-up area

2.4.4 Transportation

The main task of the BHS is the transportation of the baggage from the check-in to the airplane with in between, if required, a storage facility and the screening area. A couple of different transportation methods are:

Manual transport

On very small airports where the check-in desks are close to the make-up area manual transportation may be used, what could be a handling agent walking the bag through the system. Another good example of manual transport is the T2T transport (as shown in Figure 2.6) where tractor pulled carts transport the bags via the apron. This kind of transport is used, because of small short handling time or the occupancy of the route.

Conveyor

The best known transportation equipment in the industry are conveyors. For this can either belt conveyors (like from Figure 2.7) or roller conveyors, from what the first are commonly used (Bentvelsen 2015). The conveyor can overcome height differences and can make corners as long as the systems maxima are taken into account. The design quest is to use multiple smaller conveyors or a couple of longer conveyors. With smaller conveyors the system is more flexible while for longer conveyors the system is more energy efficient and reliable against breakdowns.

(19)

(Spiral) chute and elevators

To let the baggage descent, without interruption and the use of energy a chute or either a spiral chute (Figure 2.8) can be used. It has to be taken into account that by the use of a chute the identification is lost, if that was given to the position of the bag on the belt.

A chute is commonly used before a manual make-up area. Besides chutes, elevators can be used to transport bags upward when limited space is available. Contrary to chutes the identification of the bags is kept with an elevator. Examples of elevators are forklifts, lifts, spiral and vertical conveyors.

Figure 2.6: Containers and carts transported by a truck between the airplane and the make-up area (“Zimbio” 2016)

Figure 2.7: A belt conveyor what transports bags (“Flight Deck Aviation” 2016)

Figure 2.8: A spiral chute to safely transport bags levels down

(“Safeglide” 2016)

2.4.5 Sorting

Having an optimal performing BHS requires sorting equipment to ensure that the baggage arrives at the right location and time, supplied from different locations. A couple of examples are listed below.

Manual sorting

The baggage is transported to an internal outlet area where an operator can separate the bags for the different locations. The process is labor intensive, but it has its advantages in the flexibility.

In-Line sorting

This method is well applied when the throughput is an important key-point of the system. An initial solution: pushers and diverters (like Figure 2.9) , literally push the bag of the conveyor onto another conveyor. Secondly a well used solution is a vertical sorter (as shown in Figure 2.10) which is able to differ the output through a central levelable conveyor onto two different levels. Thirdly the bag can be put onto another belt at the right moment by using a side induction arrangement. With this technology the bag is queued on several conveyors and loaded onto the destination conveyor by speeding up and synchronizing the speed of the bag to destination.

Dedicated sorting equipment

The conveyor itself can also be equipped with sorting equipment on individual bag carriers. For this bag carrier consists of a tilting surface (what is shown in Figure 2.11) or a small conveyor perpendicular of the main flow. The carrier acts when the bag passes a position, at what the bag needs to be sort out of the system. This equipment is used when throughput is one of the important factors of the system.

In-Line Individual Carrier System (ICS)

The technology of the dedicated sorting equipment can also be applied to separate carriers improving the throughput of the system. The bags are put onto an individual cart which is switched from track to track like a train to reach its final destination on that track. Unloading of the ICS is done in the same manner of dedicated sorting equipment tilting or with a small conveyor.

Figure 2.9: A pusher sorting system (“Vanderlande” 2016a)

Figure 2.10: A vertical sorter (“Vanderlande” 2016b)

Figure 2.11: A tilt tray sorting arrangement (“Airport Technology” 2016)

(20)

2.4.6 Storage

The system needs to store bags if the make-up area, where the containers and carts are loaded, is not yet open. The bags can already be in the system, because of early arrival of passenger or long transfers. For that a storage facility is required what can be done in several methods:

Manual storage

In general an Early Baggage Storage (EBS) is automated, but when a small airport is considered it could also be a manual operation. An automated EBS is advised when the total required capacity is above 1000 bags and the input rates are more than 250 bags per hour (IATA 2004).

Virtual buffer

A storage with a little investment is the virtual buffer where the bag is looped through the system until the make-up area is opened. Disadvantage of this system is that the throughput and capacity of the system decreases.

Belt conveyor buffer lines

Next step in technology is to create a buffer area with conveyors that are loaded and stopped for a while. An example of such a setup is shown in Figure 2.12, in this bags can be sorted on the different conveyors based on the departure time of flights or sorted per flight. Bags can loop back to the start of the lane if not all of the bags need to be unloaded of the lane.

Storage and retrieval system

A more automated solution is the application of separate carts that are stored separately on different levels on racks (Figure 2.13). The bags are individually accessible and by that the bags can be transported to the make-up area in the right order. A disadvantage of the system are the high investment costs, compared to the conveyor lanes solution as shown in Figure 2.14.

Figure 2.12: Buffer lanes

(Lemain 2002) Figure 2.13: Automated storage and retrieval system _{(“Deutsche Bank” 2016)} Figure 2.14: Costs of a bagstore compared to buffer _{lanes (Kohlmann 2012)}

2.4.7 Make-up

Just like the boarding procedure of passengers bags also need to be checked before they enter the airplane. This check for the baggage is done at the make-up area where the personal scans the baggage label and the label of the ULD or baggage carts. This is done to ensure that the bags end up at the right flight and to specify its location of the bag in the airplane. It depends on the airport whether transfer baggage goes through the same make-up area, some airports have separate systems for transfer baggage.

Manual make-up

The make-up process is still mostly a manual process (Kohlmann 2012). The staff picks up the bag from the output area of the BHS, scans the bag and puts it in the right ULD or cart to be transported to the airplane. An example of such a process is shown in Figure 2.15.

(21)

Semi automated make-up

In order to overcome the many health issues related to work of manual make-up solution are created to do have semi-automated make-up. An example of a solution for this is a lifting table (Figure 2.15) what eases the work of the operator by helping to lift the bag, pitfall is that it is still slower and it cannot handle 5-15% of all the bags (Kohlmann 2012). Another example of a solution is an inline conveyor that can be directed into the container or baggage cart. Disadvantage is that it cannot load the container anymore to the top, because of the height of the conveyor.

Automated loading

Robots are sometimes used in the make-up area (Figure 2.17), but because this technology is relatively new the machine still needs supervision. Like the semi-automated solutions an operator is still required to load the last bags into containers (Kohlmann 2012). When the machine can operate without supervision manual and semi-automated loading becomes irrelevant (Bentvelsen 2015).

Figure 2.15: Manual loading at Changai airport

(“TNP” 2016) Figure 2.16: Semi-automated make-up with Stack@Ease (“AviationPros” 2016a)

Figure 2.17: Automated loading robot (“Vanderlande” 2016c)

2.4.8 Outlet

The bags leave the system on two sides of the system, at the make-up area where the bag is made ready to be transported to the airplane and at the arrival area where the passenger picks-up the bag. The method of the outlet is for both functions almost the same. A couple of different methods are:

Laterals

A lateral is a long straight ending conveyor belt as shown in Figure 2.18. Bags from different flights are put on this lateral what means that the personal needs to check and sort out the bags for the location. The personal scans the bag to ensure that the bag is loaded on the right flight.

Carrousel

A carrousel or racetrack (Figure 2.19) is what is known from for example most reclaim areas. Baggage can easily be picked up from several sides of the carrousel.

Chutes/bins

The chutes or also called bins (Figure 2.20) can also be used on at the make-up area or either the arrival side for passengers, this is for example used at some airports with a high throughput of ski-equipment. Depending on the sorting capabilities of the system, the staff can put the bags directly into the right cart or firstly need to sort these.

Figure 2.18: Loading of baggage from laterals (“Vanderlande” 2016d)

Figure 2.19: Loading baggage from a carrousel (“Vanderlande” 2016d)

Figure 2.20: Loading from chutes (Lemmen 2016)

(22)

2.5 Stakeholders

The performance of the BHS depends on the perspective, the airport has another interest than the passenger who takes the flight. To have a clear view on this a stakeholder analysis is done to know what parties are of concern in the design process of what their requirements are. Many stakeholders are involved in the baggage handling operations, besides that the handling needs to operate with other airports and standards. This combination makes that new technologies are still difficult to implement in the BHSs (Owusu 2016).

The stakeholder analysis is done with as basis Figure 2.21. The information required for this analysis is based on (Kohlmann 2012; Babeliowsky 1997; Bentvelsen 2015). The factors of importance for the different stakeholders are intended to categorize by the writer, this results in the categories; costs, throughput, quality and norms.

Figure 2.21: Main stakeholder’s airport (Dijks et al. 2010)

2.5.1 Airport

The airport is the supplier of the facilities and leases this to the different service providers. The goal of the airport is to ensure a quality service to the passenger, what in the end supports regional growth (Schaar et al. 2010). Investors of airports are in general governmental organizations, airlines and private investors, this group initiates mostly the design of new facilities at the airport. The main factors of importance for these stakeholders are:

 Costs

o Capital expenditure (CAPEX) o Operational expenditure (OPEX) o Required space

o Return on Investment (ROI)  Throughput

o Capacity

o In-system processing time  Quality

o Reliability

o Customer experience

2.5.2 Safety and security

The people and baggage are respectively checked for safety and security reasons. The regulations on whenever and how the checks has to be performed differ for every airport and are mostly based on the governmental regulations. Both operations ensure that when the passenger or the bag is not secure both do not enter the airplane. Factors of importance of this group are:

 Norms

(23)

2.5.3 Customers

The customers of the airport can be divided into the direct customer in the appearance of the airline and the indirect customers as the passengers, so the customers of the airlines.

Airlines

The airlines take care of the check-in of passengers and the reconciliation, what is as explained to ensure that passengers do not travel without their bag. The airlines are the main users of the BHS what result in the performance of the BHS being of importance. Some airlines have their own handling unit what is mostly their home airport like for instance A.A.S. for KLM. Factors of importance for the airlines are:

 Costs

o OPEX  Throughput

o Capacity

o In-system processing time  Quality

o Reliability

Passengers

The final customers of the airport are the passengers. The baggage handling unit is not of much importance for the passenger, but it can influence the choose for an airport. The quality of the service is by that of great importance for the airport, because it has indirectly effect on the amount of handled passengers. The factors of importance are by that:

 Quality

o Reliability

2.5.4 Baggage system

The BHS is operated by the handlers and one level below that the Operations and Maintenance group keeps up the system.

Handlers

It differs per airport which parties operate the BHS. An airport may choose to hire one handler for all the flights, by that the handling is a service to the airlines. Other possibility is that airline hires a handler what results in several make-up locations at the airport. More handlers has market forces as a result, what can result in less operations costs. The different handlers are on one side competitors, but they also need to cooperate with each other when baggage needs to be transferred from one handler to another. The factors of importance for the handlers are listed below.

 Norms

o Ergonomics o Work regulations

Operations and Maintenance (O&M)

The lifetime of a BHS is around 15-20 year and this can only reliable be reached when the system is maintained properly. The method of maintenance is of no importance in this chapter. The O&M stakeholder can be a department in directly working for the airports or as part of a separate company. The supplier of provides also often a contract to ensure the maintenance for a time period.  Throughput o Capacity  Norms o Work regulations  Quality o Reliability

(24)

2.5.5 Governments

The method of handling passengers and baggage at the airport depends completely on the regulations given by the national and municipal governments. Main aspect for the governments is the safety of the system and passengers combined with the working circumstances. The capacity of the airport is also mostly determined by the government as they regulate the amount of landings and the available space for the airport. Factors of interest for the government are:

 Throughput o Capacity  Norms o Work regulations o Safety regulations o Landing rights o Airspace access o Airplane movements o Opening times

2.6 Conclusion: Function and equipment of a BHS

The chapter concerned the whole part of functioning of a BHS including the stakeholders with their vision the system. The following questions were answered in this chapter:

 What are the functions of the BHS and what are solutions to fulfill these functions?

 What are the stakeholders of a BHS and what are important factors for them concerning the function and design of BHS?

As illustrated in this chapter the process of baggage handling is the whole process of transportation from the check-in desk until the reclaim area. The baggage handling also concerns of applying the right information to the bag at the check-in desk as well the whole process of tracing and screening.

On the input side the systems needs to handle different shapes and sizes of bags. It depends on the system what of this baggage is concerned as OOG-baggage. A special system and or counter needs to installed to handle this baggage.

A list of different handling methods are available to handle the bags in the different stages. Depending on the airport type other types of systems are chosen for the functions. Smaller airports tend to have more manual operations where-as larger airports have more automated systems, for example for sorting.

The stakeholders look at the system from their own perspective what results in a list of different important factors. The main stakeholder of the systems is seen as the airport what has to act with all the involved parties starting from safety and security, the customers what concern airlines and passengers and finally the BHS itself what contains the handlers and the operation and maintenance.

In short the factors of importance for the different stakeholders can be divided into factors concerning costs, throughput, norms and quality. For costs the return of investment of the system is of importance for airports what differs for airlines and handlers where the operational costs are of more importance. The quality of the system is of importance to almost all stakeholders, while this affects the available throughput concluding with the costs of the system.

(25)

3. Operational Performance

Performance measurement is getting of more importance (Ittner et al. 1998) for companies nowadays, to measure how well the company or parts of it function related to history or to its competitors. This all is in essence summarized by Lord Kelvin (1824-1907) in his quote:

“When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in number your know something about it… [otherwise] your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in thought advanced to stage of science.”

Although performance is used often as a management term the definition is not clearly defined. By that in literature and in management positions there is often misunderstanding of the used definition. This starts already from the term performance, some authors use this interchangeable with the term efficiency, effectiveness and profitability (Sink et al. 1989; Chew 1988; Sumanth 1984; Koss et al. 1993; Thomas et al. 1994; Jackson 1999). In general performance is a difficult matter because the measurables need to be specified for a specific company or system. Often measurements are done without a clear understanding of the system what results in sometimes optimizing of the wrong root-cause (Tangen 2005).

3.1 Definition

The different use of definitions creates the requirement to clearly define the chosen definition. This also to see the difference with the often misused term of productivity for the same matter.

Firstly the term Operational Performance will be described, where-after there will be zoomed-into the terms that fall below the term of performance as stated in literature (Pekuri et al. 2011).

Performance is the umbrella of several terms and is by dictionary the achievement against some benchmark, so against some goals that were set up in advance (Chow et al. 1994). The term covers the economic and operational aspects, what can be summarized with the terms; costs, flexibility, speed, dependability or quality (Tangen 2005). The five terms are summarized in Figure 3.1 with the internal objective on the inner-circle and the outcome for the customer outside the circle.

(26)

Profitability is the term that fits below performance and describes the success and growth of any business as the ratio between revenue and costs. A change in profitability does not directly results in a better operation procedure in the company, changes in cost or price inflation for example does not mean a better use of resources (Stainer 1997). The profitability of a system ,to conclude, can be defined by the output quantities (Nout) times the output unit price

(Costout), per input quantities (Nin) times unit costs (Costin) as summarized in the following

formula (Bernolak 1997).

Productivity zooms into the system and is often used as indicator for better performance of the company. Actually many people who make decision of plant efficiency do not know what it exactly is (Björkman 1991). It is defined as the ratio between output (i.e. produced goods) to input (i.e. consumed resources), opposite of this performance is for example also related to the economical affects. Often companies link productivity directly to profitability what results in a lack of improvements in productivity. The definition of productivity is well described by

Bernolak:

“Productivity means how much and how well we produce from resources used. If we produce more or better goods from the same resources we increase productivity. Or if we produce the same goods from lesser resources, we also increase productivity. By “resources”, we mean all human and physical resources, i.e. the people who produce the goods or provide the services, and the assets with which the people can produce the goods or provide the services. The resources that people use include the land and buildings, fixed and moving machines and equipment, tools, raw materials , inventories and other current asset (Bernolak 1997).”

Summarizing, a good productivity is achieved by elimination of “waste” in the process as known from the lean principles. The productivity is summarized with the output quantities (Nout)

per input quantities (Nin), as in the form of a formula:

Efficiency and effectiveness create the coherence and overlap between the improvement terms for the three P’s as shown in Figure 3.2. The terms are often confused with each other. In general it is described by the definition of Sink and Tuttle (Sink et al. 1989) as effectiveness is “doing the right things” whereas efficiency means “doing things right”. To explain this a little better Neely’s explanation is used:

“Effectiveness refers to the extent to which customer requirements are met, while efficiency is a measure of how economically the firm’s resources are utilized when providing a given level of customer satisfaction (Neely et al. 2005).”

From these definitions it can clearly be seen that effectiveness is strongly related to what the customer wants whereas efficiency describes utilization of resources and by that mainly effects the productivity ratio (Tangen 2005).

(27)

3.2 Performance of a BHS

In the 90s the market for air handling in the EU was liberated to reduce the operation costs and to improve the quality of airplane handling. Before this time transportation was regulated, because it was seen as a part of public interest and involvement of the state was considered as necessary (Schmidberger et al. 2009).

The liberalization of the process resulted in competitive pressure on the air side, but also especially on the ground side (Albers et al. 2005). The importance of the performance of the BHS can be seen from the fact that ground handling, what includes handling of passengers, baggage and airplanes, is getting the biggest challenge and main factor that determines sustainable success (Gonnord et al. 2000; Wyld et al. 2005).

Currently the performance of airports is mainly viewed from the perspective of the airport as an organization, not for the different parts of as for example the BHS (Francis et al. 2005). Besides that the factors are mostly concentrated on the financial performance what is of importance for the investors. Schmidberger(Schmidberger et al. 2009) argues that a Performance Measurement System (PMS) is missing in the industry to combine the financial performance with the given quality, resulting in the ability to benchmark the performance with competitors. To improve the industries’ performance Schmidberger set up a PMS to answer the important question: “what are our competitors doing?”.

In this part the main performance indicators for the stakeholders are described. This is done following the description of the definition as stated in chapter 3. The separation of performance in efficiency and effectiveness is used to split the indicators in utility and customer agreement level.

3.2.1 Performance indicators of a BHS

It is easy to create a complete list of measurables, but with that it is difficult to see the relations between the indicators. Although for companies it is common to have a list of 30 – 40 factors that describes the performance (Bernolak 1997). The performance of the system should be judged by an appropriate set of criteria that fits the objectives for the stakeholder for example the airline or airport (Lodewijks 2016). This requires an extensive research, because it is necessary to understand the inter-relations between the different factors.

Choosing the wrong indicator

Choosing the right performance indicators is difficult and as stated, choosing the wrong indicators may lead to improvements of the wrong part of the process. An example of this is a story of a baggage handling process, where the essential performance indicator was “to get the plane of on time” (Friedli et al. 2013). When this was not reached the responsible department were blamed for that. The departments became very self focused on the indicator what resulted in handlers pushing bags a side, lost them or even put them on another plane to prevent late departure of the flight. Worst incident of all was a baggage handler who took a screw driver and stuck it in a conveyor, causing a halt. Therefore the system was considered as broken, so it was not the blame of the handling department. Obviously this did not improve the performance of the handling process, while just for the indicator it looked that the department was well functioning.

Categorization

The categories from the definition of performance are used to list the indicators. Besides that the factors of productivity are split in efficiency and effectiveness factors. The list is based on literature (Weber et al. 2005; Bauer 2011; Kaplan et al. 1992; Bernolak 1997) and is created to visualize the writer’s vision on how several indicators can be categorized. The list is a shortlist, complete insight in the system is required to set-up a complete list of measures.

(28)

3.2.1.1 Productivity

A high productivity of the BHS is of importance to all the stakeholders. It all starts with a well thought-out terminal location and process, having the staff operating in the most efficient way. For the BHS all operations and staff from the check-in desk to delivery of the baggage at the apron are included. Some indicators what describe the productivity are listed in Table 3.1. In this table also the fault products are included, because a decrease in fault products improves the productivity (Tangen 2005).

Goals Measures Affecting subgroups Affecting matters

Productivity Used resources Unit energy requirement Unit material requirement Capital coefficient Labor productivity

Delivered output Throughput Handling time

Quality MHB

Cargo Doors Closed (CDC) Departure punctuality Fibag, Labag

Prio first on belt (van der Lande 2012)

Table 3.1: Factors affecting the productivity of a BHS

3.2.1.2 Profitability

Above the productivity is the matter of profitability what concerns about the financial performance of the system. In this research ROI is worked out with some affecting measures, because this is the most commonly used indicator for companies (Bernolak 1997). The ROI concerns besides productivity, as listed in Table 3.2 measures as revenue, the CAPEX and the OPEX per bag.

Profitability (ROI) Productivity

Revenue (per bag) Market mechanism Delivered quality CAPEX (per bag) Investment of equipment Equipment quality

# Machines Investment in training FTE quality OPEX (per bag) Labour expenses # FTEs

Non-labour expenses Energy usage

Cost of poor quality Mishandled Baggage On-time performance

Table 3.2: Factors affecting the profitability of a BHS

3.2.1.3 Performance

The total performance of the system is a function of the profitability and productivity. Besides this matter it concerns a short list of other measures (Tangen 2005). The affecting subgroups can be extended to have the complete overview of related matters. The quality in this is the extra quality given above the sold quality. A good passenger experience leads to an increase of reputation what is likely to result in an increased passenger traffic, what makes it an essential matter for airports and by that baggage handlers (Bradley 2010).

Performance Profitability Productivity

Quality Delivered quality Passenger experience

Speed Minimum Connection time

Reliability Maintenance

Flexibility

(29)

3.3 Conclusion: Operational performance of a BHS

In this chapter the performance of a BHS is approached form a theoretical point of view, what ends with the factors to describe the performance of a BHS. The questions answered in this chapter were:

 What is operational performance and how are Efficiency and Effectiveness related to this?  What are key performance indicators for a BHS?

Theoretical view on operational performance

Firstly operational performance is considered as a kind of vague definition, because most people mean something else with it. As a result of this it is important to define the used definition to categorize the performance indicators in an appropriate way.

Operational performance is seen as the overarching umbrella what concerns the achievement of goals set in advance or compared to a kind of benchmark. Profitability falls below this and takes into account the profit earned per required costs. Often wrongly distinguished from this is

productivity what explains how well the process functions concerning the amount of resources required to produce an amount of products. In this the costs are by that not included.

Efficiency and effectiveness describe factors in two main categories for performance, profitability and productivity. Efficiency describes how economically well a firm’s resources are utilized where-as effectiveness displays the ability to which extent the customer’s requirements are met.

Key performance indicators of a BHS

The performance of a BHS can be increased by multiple indicators as seen from the given lists what are even still not all the indicators. As stated indicators influence each other and by that it is hard for companies to choose an appropriate set of criteria (Friedli et al. 2013). A decrease in handling time for example would suggest a improvement in productivity. Actually this is only the case when the output increases more than the amount of required resources.

From literature it is given that MHB is an often used indicator to measure a part of the performance of a BHS (Alsyouf et al. 2014). The tables provide that this indicator influences the performance of the system in several parts of the measurement. It also shows that this indicator contributes in efficiency matters, because of the costs, as well as the effectiveness what is a result of the increasing passenger experience.

As explained it has to be kept in mind that changes in the system affect the performance of the system. An improvement could by that improve one indicator while it affects another. It is strongly advised to deeply analyze the system to understand the factors affect each-other before doing improvements. This to have a clear view on the possible outcome of the improvements.