Enhancing Airport Baggage Handling Efficiency for Smooth Travel Experiences
Have you ever wondered how luggage moves seamlessly to your destination after checking it with an airline attendant at the front desk? Behind the scenes, significant manpower and machinery are making it possible for your luggage to move from one location to another, across oceans and continents.
On a recent layover for a trip to Japan, I had an hour-and-a-half stopover at Canada’s Largest International airport. I walked around the airport, amazed at the miles-long conveyors that work continuously to move luggage from departure to arrival points. Considering 40 million people utilize this airport annually to begin their bucket-list vacations, important work meetings, honeymoons, and plenty of other trips - one can imagine there is a lot of baggage that needs to be moved without disruption, too. That’s where Augury enters the picture!
Over the last 3 years, Augury has assisted this highly trafficked airport to be recognized as the “Best Airport” by Airports Council International World in 2023. This award recognizes airports across the globe for delivering the best experience for their passengers. This undoubtedly includes ensuring luggage is delivered on time. With the help of our blue sensors, continuous monitoring, and predictive maintenance covering their conveyor system, the airport team has been able to avoid unplanned failures that normally would have resulted in baggage delays in domestic and international terminals.
Five years into their journey, this airport and its baggage team are achieving impressive results. However, we all have to start with the basics and ensure teams are trained, enabled, and trust Augury’s data to take action on machines with potential faults.
At the start of our partnership in 2019, this customer was focused on assets with urgent faults. The light at the end of the tunnel was to avoid unplanned failures that would delay baggage delivery and cause the headaches some of us know too well. In year one, the goals were to reduce maintenance costs, optimize labor, and promote data-driven decision-making as the facility team learned how to use the solution.
As the team became more comfortable, the airport’s maintenance program evolved too. Our service started moving beyond individual asset care and started steering towards reliability effectiveness and development. The airport team is now using the data collected to standardize condition-based reliability on their 400+ machines to avoid unplanned failures and become smarter with their reliability practices. In conjunction with the staff and their contractor, our reliability experts help their team prioritize machine maintenance, implement new practices, and uncover systematic risk and improvement across their baggage operations.
The next time you fly into Canada know there’s a blue little box packed with over 12 years of knowledge helping your bag get to its final destination seamlessly!