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MANAGING AIRPORTS TODAY 42 airportbusiness May 2015 thousands of individual line items to thousands of customers around the world. A simple FIFO process would simply not provide the level of flexibility and speed that is essential in this highly competitive market. Instead, retailers use sophisticated warehousing technologies which can pick, sort, batch and dispatch indi- vidual items as they are pulled from storage by customer demand. If this process is applied to baggage han- dling, the baggage is no longer "pushed" through the check-in, security and make-up process, but it is "pulled" by the ground han- dler for batch-loading onto the specific flight. This new approach certainly requires a change in technology as well as philosophy, but the result is a baggage handling process which is faster, more secure and more flexible, both for the airport, the airlines and the passengers. BAGGAGE WAREHOUSE The inherent flaw in the conventional baggage handling process flow is that the ground han- dlers have virtually no control over the number of bags received at check-in, or the number of arrival and departure flights. The best that can be expected from this push-fed approach is that baggage flows smoothly through the system with as few delays or lost bags as possible. The concept of the holistic baggage han- dling system, however, turns this around by creating a baggage warehouse as a buffer between the in-feed from check-in and the out-feed to the loading gate. The process starts with automated bag- drops. These allow passengers to check-in their baggage at any time, rather than be restricted to a three-hour time-slot before the departure of their flight. At the self-check-in the passen- ger receives their boarding card and an IATA barcode tag to attach to their baggage before it is weighed and placed in an individual tote. The baggage tag is coupled to the embedded RF tag on the tote and the bag remains in the same tote through-out the complete check-in to security, and security to make-up process. The holistic approach to baggage handling uses the concept of the Early Baggage Store and adds new capabilities to transform it into a baggage warehouse. The bags which arrive from check-in are still in their assigned totes and they remain in-tote as they are held in this warehouse. As each flight approaches its scheduled loading time, the ground handling operator enters the num- ber of the next departing flight and the control system identifies and retrieves the bags for that flight and transports them to the queuing lane for loading. Bags which have been checked-in closer to the flight departure can be flagged up as a priority to the centralized security section and called directly to the queuing lane as soon as they clear security. The ability to identify and prioritize bags which are required for immi- nent departures means that a higher percent- age of bags will be successfully loaded onto the correct flight. The function to call-up individual bags to create flight-specific batches of around 40 bags per batch means that the ULDs or carts for each flight can be speed-loaded, which has a signifi- cant impact on productivity. In the convention- al system a member of the ground staff team would be in attendance at the gate throughout the three-hour loading period. With the flexi- bility provided by the baggage warehouse, the ground handler simply opens the position and speed-loads the batch of bags onto the ULD or cart before closing the position and moving onto another task. The role that the baggage handling sys- tem integrator plays in coordinating efficien- cies throughout this baggage handling value stream is crucial. Detailed analysis of every aspect of the entire, coordinated baggage han - dling process is the only way to ensure the most effective reductions in cost, improvements in handling efficiency, and the highest levels of safety in the working environment. The combi- nation of a high-speed transport and sortation system, with a high-capacity baggage ware- house, solves the speed, tracking, storage and security challenges in one simple, end-to-end system. If a retail industry process is applied to baggage handling, the baggage is no longer "pushed" through the check-in, security and make-up process, but it is "pulled" by the ground handler for batch-loading onto the specific flight. BEUMER Corporation ABOUT THE AUTHOR Henrik Cort, Beumer Corporaton Henrik Cort began working in the airport baggage handling industry in 1997 when he joined Crisplant, a member of the BEUMER Group. Since 2011, Cort has held the position of director of airport sales for BEUMER Corporation in North America, also part of BEUMER Group. The BEUMER Group designs, engineers, manufactures, installs and commissions security and sortation baggage handling systems.