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The Transformation of Building 139
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Building on the experience gained in developing and installing ‘The bag factory’ transfer facility at London Gatwick Airport, Logan Teleflex has now been one of the prime players in the development of a state of the art baggage transfer facility at London Heathrow, which is regarded by Iain Minns bmi’s Transfer Manager, as the best transfer facility at Heathrow.
While it is natural for the major building projects at an airport to gain the headlines, it is often the far less dramatic behind the scene developments that ensure that an airport continues to deliver what its customer’s expect - that they and their luggage will leave, together, on time. One such development at London Heathrow, has been the transformation of Building 139 into a modern transfer facility that can handle existing and future requirements.
The effective handling of transfer baggage - baggage that is transferred between flights - is very important to any airport. Yet, in a number of instances during the late 1990s Heathrow saw the baggage transfer handling requirements grow faster than the basic facilities at its disposal could be developed. A prime example was Building 139. This is the transfer facility at Heathrow Terminal 1 for, among others, bmi - the UK’s second largest full service airline and Heathrow’s second biggest user - and by the end of 1999 the operation was essentially bursting at the seams.
As Iain Minns, bmi’s Transfer Manager reports, “As an Airline, we have achieved significant growth in passenger numbers and scheduled flights out of Heathrow over the past decade. These factors, combined with more and ever tighter flight connections, have resulted in significant increases in transfer baggage volumes - increases that by the turn of the millennium exceeded earlier predictions.”
“One result of this was that the basic transfer system employed at Building 139 was, at peak times, struggling to cope with demand. Overall, it was continually presenting us with customer service and cost issues,” he adds.
However, this situation has now been completely reversed since the completion of a major re-development project. Conceived and project managed by BAA and Millar Management, a new highly automated baggage transfer system has been engineered and installed at Building 139 by Logan Teleflex (UK) Ltd. Not only has this enhanced system proved extremely effective, removing major bottlenecks from the operation and delivering a massive increase in capacity, it is now regarded by many - including the operators - as a model that should be used for the future.
Three Into One Won’t Go
One of the core problems with the original development at Building 139 was that it had been designed, at the time, as an initial measure to meet an immediate need for greater transfer system throughput. However, the rapid volume increases had overtaken the facility, leaving it with a general lack of capacity.
Added to this, was the fact that the ‘Phase 1’ solution had also, due to time and space constraints, not included any specific design consideration for the varying handling requirements of the different types of transfer baggage that the facility has to deal with. For example, bags that arrive too late to make their onward flight - termed ‘re flight’ bags - have to be sorted and allocated onto the next appropriate flight, but also have to go through an additional level of security screening. Similarly, the facility has to sort out and store early bags - bags for flights that are not yet being made up.
As a result, the original system at Building 139 - a relatively standard solution - delivered a primarily manual, single process operation. Essentially, all transfer bags that entered the facility were manually loaded onto to a 100% Hold Baggage Screening (HBS) line, screened, and then transferred to the make up area, where they would be deposited on the make up carousel. At this point, the make up operators had to manually sort through the live, re-flight and early bags, and then deal separately with the different types. These processes were labour intensive and time consuming, often resulting in the removal of operators from their prime task of making up flights, and so lowering capacity and adding cost to maintain service standards. There was also the additional issue of ensuring that the reflight and early bags were returned to the carousel in time to be dispatched to their flight.
“There was no doubt that the facility’s make up carousel was too small, and there were not enough make up points to fully cope with the increasing volumes. But, these basic capacity constraints were being severely compounded by the lack of pre-sorting and the often duplication of effort caused by the system’s inability to deal effectively with re-flight and early bags,” explains Barry Nestler, BAA Development Manager for Building 139.
Overall, the reality was that the system required high levels of manual intervention, especially at peak times, to keep the throughput maintained. And, while the system could theoretically deliver the intended capacity of around 24 bags per minute, the limited make up space and the double handling caused the system capacity to reduce to as low as 10 bags per minute, as die-back on the conveyors occurred.
A New Approach
Recognising the problems at Building 139, a design team was established by BAA to develop a radically new handling system that could be introduced as part of a planned re-development of the facility. “Our initial task, in conjunction with BAA designers, was to develop a new system concept that would not only expand the core capacity of the system, but also through the use of automation provide for the effective handling of both re-flight and early bags, ” notes Rob Millar, Managing Director of Millar Management.
As Jonathan Roberts, Project Manager at Logan Teleflex adds, “Building on the initial concept work, we worked closely with Millar Management to incorporate our baggage system knowledge and experience of other transfer facilities into the design, and so engineer a solution that could be effectively realised.”
This final solution, which has been installed, incorporates three major areas of improvement. The first is a new front offload and pre-sort area. Originally, transport drivers had to make two separate baggage drop off stops. At the first stop, transfer baggage for building 139 had to be sorted from the container and the loaded straight on to one of the two conveyor lines that fed the HBS lines. Then at a different stop the remaining ITO baggage (baggage for other transfer facilities) was deposited.
“This approach offered plenty of opportunities for mistakes to be made and bags delivered to the wrong facility,” notes Millar. “Whereas, the new re-organised and expanded arrangement avoids these problems by employing just one stop.”
At each of the five main offload points there are now two conveyors. Baggage for Building 139 goes on an orange conveyor, where it is automatically checked for ‘out of gauge’ and then transported into the facility.
The ITO bags are placed on the other ‘blue’ conveyor and are transported to the other side of the dock to a designated ITO pick up point, and waiting transport vans. The result of these changes is that bags are now deposited much more quickly and efficiently, and the traffic flow around the building has been improved.
At the other end of the facility, the second major change has been the re-development of the make up area. This now provides an increased number of make up spaces, and includes a new and much larger ‘race track’ carousel. A new and enlarged early bag store has also been introduced.
An Elegant Solution
However, at the heart of this enhanced facility are the automated re-flight and early bag sorting systems. Now, on entering the facility all bags from the five offload stations are transported up to a new first floor, and on to one of two automated coding loops. Each loop provides both a bar code reading system, and a manual coding station, where re-flight bags are identified. A Fabricom Airport Systems Sort Allocation Computer (SAC) system provides for the IATA licence plate decoding requirements Associated with the sort. The re-flight bags are then separated from the main baggage, using a verti-sort conveyor.
On leaving the coding loops, all the live and early bags are conveyed down to the ground floor and onto the original HBS lines. But, once through the security system, these bags are then conveyed back up to the first floor, where the bags are again scanned and this time the early bags are identified. These are then sent to the new early baggage storage facility, and only re-introduced to the system when their flight becomes live. The remaining ‘live’ bags are transferred back down to the new ‘race-track’ carousel for make up.
The pre-sorted re-flight bags are now conveyed through a in line screening system, on the first floor, and then diverted down to the ground floor to new dedicated re-flighting system. However, the bags are first deposited onto the old make-up carousel.
As Jonathan Roberts explains, “Part way through the development of this part of the system, it was realised that there could be problems with the re-flight stations being overloaded at peak times, and this could impact right back through the whole facility. As a result, and after much redesign work by the combined team, a new arrangement was developed and this re-uses the old make up carousel, which was to be discarded, as a buffer store for the re-flight system.”
Bags are now drawn from the carousel by operators at one of four new dedicated re-flight work stations and reassigned to new fights. Once re-allocated, the re-flight bags are then automatically re-introduced into the main system on the first floor.
Meeting the Challenges
“This was a challenging design and installation project for a number of reasons,” notes Roberts. “One of the biggest issues was fitting this far more sophisticated and automated system within the confines of the existing building. This was made even more difficult as Logan Fabricom had to retain as much of the original conveyors as possible.
The organisation also developed the system to incorporate as much redundancy as possible, using reversible conveyors, to enable maintenance and maintain throughput in case of some element failure. Ensuring that all the operators were fully trained on the new system elements was also crucial. Finally, the other - ever present factor - was the need to implement the best solution within the very tight deadlines for different phases of the development.”
Nestler agrees, “The development project presented many challenges. But despite these, the result has been very pleasing for all concerned.”
The new Building 139 transfer baggage handling system, which has now been fully operational for a year, is delivering against all the key performance indicators. Manual handling has been reduced dramatically, the dedicated re-flight system means that the re-flight bags are dealt with much faster and more effectively, and as a result, the ‘right’ bags are presented for make up much more quickly. As a result all the bags that pass through to the make up ‘race track’ are now routinely reconciled and placed in a container / Wessex for dispatch within one circulation of the carousel. Overall, this speedier processing and more make up space, has enabled capacity to be almost doubled from 24 to 43 bags/minute. Moreover, the project has seen other major improvements. The whole building has been upgraded to provide the staff with a much better working environment, and the facility management have much better access to flight information. Apart from now being able to fully provide the service expected by customers, the bottom line benefits for the facility operators include the reported improvement that for the first time in many years a night shift was not needed to cover the demand over the peak season.
As Minns concludes, “This was a well managed project that has effectively resolved all the main constraint issues, and the developed facility is exactly what was required. Building 139 now has the capacity and sophistication needed to effectively and rapidly sort and handle existing volumes of transfer baggage, and provide for foreseeable future increases. I now regard it as the best transfer facility at Heathrow.”
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