The History Of Baggage Handling Systems

The History Of Baggage Handling SystemsWhat was to be the worlds largest automated aerodrome luggage handling clay, became a classic story in how technology encounters can go wrong.Faced with the need for greater airport capacity, the city of Denver elected to construct a new state of the stratagem airport that would cement Denvers position as an air transportation hub.Denvers new international airport was to be the pride of the Rockies, a wonder of modern plan1. It was almost twice the size of Manhattan and about 10 terms the breadth of Heathrow. The airport can handle the landing of three jet planes simultaneously even off in bad weather. The airports luggage-handling system was even more impressive than its girth. The coal-mine like cars ran along 21 miles of steel track. 4,000 tele-cars routed and delivered luggage between the counters, gates and claim areas of 20 different airlines2. A CNS of some 100 computers connected to one an other and to 5,000 surveillance cameras, 400 wireless(prenominal) receivers and 56 bar-code scanners coordinated the safe and incidentally arrival of every luggage.At least that was the plan.The airports baggage handling system was a small component in the plan. By automating the baggage handling, aircraft turn close to time was to be reduced to as little as 30 minutes. Faster turnaround meant more efficient operations and was a cornerstone of the airports competitive advantage. contempt much(prenominal) noble intentions the plan promptly thawed as inefficient tenderness of the complexness of the jump out effected in swelling difficultys and semipublic mortification for everyone involved. The commencement of the airport got delayed by 16 months because of the puzzle. Expenditure to maintain the empty airport and interest charges on construction loans cost the city of Denver $1.1M per twenty-four hours throughout the delay.Of the numerous awkward gaffes along the way one was an unplanned demonstration of the whole system to the media. It elucidated how the system crushed bags, expelled content and how two carts touching at high speed retorted when they bumped into each other. When scuttle day finally arrived, the system was just a silhouette of the actual plan. Rather than computerizing all 3 concourses into one stand-alone system, it was used only in one concourse, by a one airline and only for flights which were outbound. Rest of the baggage handling was implemented using standard conveyor belts and a tug and trolley system that was entirely manually operated. This was hurriedly built when it became absolutely clear that the automated baggage handling system was neer going to achieve its purpose.Although the offcuts of the system survived for 10 years, the system neer worked properly and in August 2005, United Airlines announced that they would abandon the system completely. The maintenance costs of $1 million per month considerably exceeded the monthly cost of a manual tug and trolley system.BASIC mood OF FAILURELike all other failures the problems can be observed from numerous vantage points.In its humblest form, the Denver International Airport (DIA) project fuck up because the gravestone decision makers could not analyze the complexity of the project with perfection. As intended, the system was one of the most complex baggage system ever endeavored. at that place was an exponential growth in the complexity of the project as it was almost ten times larger than any other baggage system. The heart of the complexity was a problem related to what is known as line balancing in project management terms. To adjust system performance, empty carts had to be circulated around the airport ready to carry fresh baggage.With more than 100 pickup points, the algorithms necessary to anticipate where the empty carts should wait for new bags epitomized a hideous breathing in in the mathematical aspect queuing theory.This failure in anticipating the number of empty ca rts required led to a delay in the picking up of baggage an as a result of which the system performance slide downhill.One of the main reasons of delayed initiation of the project was failure to recognize the complexity and the luck involved. Based on the pilot project schedule, this delay left a little over two years for the service agreements to be signed and for the system to be designed, developed, tested and implemented. The closest analogous projects although much smaller and simpler, took two years to implement. Given the dramatic increase in terms of size and complexity, carrying into action the Denver system in two years was an unmanageable task.As a result of the erroneous estimation of the complexity of the baggage system, the efforts required were alike underestimated. That meant that without comprehending it, the Project Management team had calculated the baggage system as the critical path of the whole airport project. To meet the airports scheduled opening date, th e project needed to be accomplished in just two years. This obviously was inadequate time and that miscalculation resulted in the project being candid to grand levels of schedule stress. The other succeeding problems were most potential a result of (or aggravated by) shortcuts opted by the team and the mistakes committed by them as they desperately seek to meet the schedule.KEY DECISIONS THAT LED TO DISASTERTill now what has been discussed has make the basic mode of failure pretty clear. But to reach the heart of the problem and what could excite been done to differently, we need to empathise how the important decisions were made which eventually hampered the whole project. Project failures typically involve a number of faulty decisions, however inwardly those many mistakes, some specific key decisions are the generators of the sequence of proceedings that eventually lead to catastrophe. anchor Decision 1 An alteration in tacticsAt the beginning of a project strategic decisi ons are made that set the projects track. In the case of DIA, a tactical blunder was made that caused flip-flop to be made part way through the project.Before requesting for bids for an integrated system in the middle of 1991, the DIAs Project Management team had evaluate that individual airlines would take care of their own baggage handling activities.In 1991, the DIAs Project Management team altered their scheme and realized that an integrated baggage handling system needed to be built. This forced them to take back the responsibility from the individual airlines and carry out the whole project themselves. This alteration of strategy arrived only about two years prior to the airports scheduled inauguration date. This timing of the decision played a major part behind the extra schedule stress that the project was exposed to.Although the decision made sense in the way that only one integrated system would be in that respect with the entire responsibility on the DIA authorities, the timing of the decision was not proper. This led to a delay in start of the integration project. They got two years less time to finish it.The significant point that the airports Project Management team failed to see was that the change in technology required an analogous change in the organizational accountabilities. The failure to identify that change signifies a planning failure that happened during the start of the project.Overall, the mistake made was a failure to associate the airports overall contrast strategy (the aim of having one of the worlds most competent airports) with the sub-strategy of building the baggage system. nominate Decision 2 The decision to continueWhat is even more impress is that in spite of knowing that on that point was insufficient time, both DIAs Project Management team and BAE wanted to go ahead with the full-scale project.Before go in into the BAE contract, there were at least three clear suggestions that the project was not feasible in two years timeBreier Neidle Patrone Associates report understandably showed that the complexity was too much for the system to be built efficaciously.The three bids received pointed out that none of the vendors could mother developed the system in time in the lead the opening date.Munich Airport warned that a much simpler version made for them took about two years to be built and around another 6 months to beat back rid of the bugs.BAE initially did not choose to bid for the project, but the question Engineer of DIA directly talked with them and managed to convince them by stating the amount of prestige that was involved with such a large scale project.Many from inside the BAE raised their concern regarding the complexity of the system to be developed and the lack of time. But all the technical advice was ignored and they went ahead with the project with a development time of 2 years.Many factors may have led them into that trap and likely issues that may have influenced the decis ion making. Other than the Chief Engineers perspective and BAEs interests there were other factors or beliefs which made the whole project start.Both sides would have acknowledged that they were working within a constricted timeframe and the pressure to move rapidly might have caused them to put due-diligence to one side.The inherent belief that such a large airport would not function effectively without an automated system. As a matter of fact, the airport is functioning effectively with a manual system in place.Key Decision 3 The timeline, budget and scopeDeciding on the timeline, budget and scope of the project is a critical issue and even more critical is committing on them to your customer. BAE did exactly that to the DIAs project management team. The decision to give a firm promise to scope, schedule and budget transmitted substantial risk onto BAEs shoulders. This clearly shows that the top management of BAE was not at all aware of the amount of risk that they were handling. BAE and the DIAs Project Management team made an additional mistake during the consultations. They excluded the airlines (who were key stakeholders) from the negotiations.Excluding stakeholders from discussions of key project decisions is always a trailing strategy.Key Decision 4 Acknowledgement of the alteration requestsBAE and DIAs Project management team could not get off from the stakeholders pressures. Although they decided during negotiations that no change requests would be entertained, they had to accept them as the pressure was on them to meet the stakeholder needs. The stakeholders in this case being the airlines, which they ignored during the original negotiations. almost of these requests forced them to make significant changes in portions where they thought work was already completed.Incorporating these changes had other troubling repercussions. They failed to realize the effect these changes might have and how they would increase the complexity of the whole system.Al though some people thought about the effects, their voices did not seem to have reached the higher decision making authorities. There was big communication disarray.Key Decision 5 Treading an alternate pathA public demonstration of the project was given to the press sometime in 1994 and it was a major embarrassment. It exposed all the flaws of the project and the Mayor immediately consistent for an external consultant to be hired. Mattias Franz of Logplan Consulting of Germany was asked to look into the matter3. Based on his report, the Mayor scraped the project and ordered for the building of a manual trolley system at an additional expenditure of about $50M USD4.Although the Mayor took a very intelligent decision, it revealed another major flaw with the project. By the time the Mayor took action, the project was already 6 months behind schedule and had missed a number of opening dates.The missed opening dates and the tragic demo indicate that those at the top echelon actually ha d almost no clue about the true status of the project.A project of such size and complexity should always have an external consultant or expert looking after it throughout the whole developmental and implementation phase. around other failure factsWhile the inefficient estimation of complexity, absence of planning, fruitless communications and lowly management oversight drove the catastrophe, the project underwent many other difficulties that multiplied the problems.Some of those issues were inevitable, but others were most probably a consequence of the time crunch the project was facing. Among the additional issues that impacted the projectFailure of risk ManagementThroughout its developmental and implementation phases the project faced a number of technical problems for which they had not accounted for. These things aggravated their already haphazard situation.Such problems were likely foreseeable had the team a little bit more attentive on risk management activities. Again possi bly as a result of the time crunch under which they were working, suitable risk management tactics seem not to have been developed.Change in LeadershipIn 1992 The Chief Engineer died. He was the systems de facto guarantor and his death left the project deprived of much required leadership. According to reports, his interim replacement lacked the in-depth engineering knowledge subjective to understand the system. The replacement manager also had to take care of his previous duties and it stretched him to the limits.Issues with Architecture and DesignA number of reports specify that the there was an inherent problem with the design that was chosen. It was unnecessarily complicated and prone to bugs. Some of the issues wereThere were more than 100 individual PCs in the system. They were all networked together. If any one of the PC failed, there could have been an outage, as there was no automatic backup taken of the data.As the nature of the design recommended a distributed structure, (with PCs scattered around the different areas), it added to the anesthetize of solving problems when they came up,The worst thing about the system was its inability to detect jams. So, whenever a jam occurred, it kept piling on more and more baggage and thereby worsening it.Again time crunch could have been a reason for the design problems. In such a situation people flow for the first design or solution they can think of. That is exactly what would likely have happened. In addition time crunch often forces teams to lose weight on the happy path design without spending time on devising strategies to counter the problem or make the system fault tolerant. oddmentThe DIA catastrophe is a prototype for failure a lot of other IT implementation projects have followed. As with so many other failures, DIA suffered fromThe inefficient estimation of complexityAn absence of proper planning resulting in consequent alterations in strategyExtreme schedule pressureAbsence of due diligenceComm itting to public and customer in the face of enormous risks and uncertaintyInefficient management of stakeholdersCommunication gaps and collapsesDesign not failsafeInefficient risk managementFailure to understand the repercussions of change requestsAbsence of management oversightWhile the above facts denote contributors to the letdown, there is one single problem that existed in the center of it all. For a project to be conquestful people need to make effective decisions and that requires a number of elements. The main two elements are expertise and knowledge. None of the teams involved in developing the DIAs baggage handling system had prior experience of a developing and implementing system of this magnitude.That lack of knowledge, along with the fact that advice from experts was habitually ignored, is the epicenter of the fiasco.The original planning decisions i.e. to go ahead with a single airport wide integrated system (in spite of being too late to do so) and the firms votive commitments to scope, timeline and budget all represented decisions that were made by people who did not possess the required knowledge. The miscalculations resulting from those choices were the sparks that kindled the fire.Often we have to face situations which we have never faced before and do not know how to proceed without risks. The success or failure of such a situation depends on the way we pit to it. The step should ideally be recognizing the situation and its nitty-gritties, but the whole DIA project management team and BAE managers failed to do so. Had they acknowledged their absence of knowledge and the ambiguity they were facing, measures could have been taken to reduce the uncertainty. One of them could have been taking suggestions from experts who had some kind of previous experience in that kind of projects.The cheerful side of the story is that in Feb 1995 DIA did ultimately open and in spite of using a large manual trolley based system, proved to be a great succes s5. The apprehensions of a manual system being too slow for and airport like DIA and would result in increase in the turnaround time of the aircrafts, was never proved.