Work category

"It was implemented last summer, in 2008. We have 150 carts running at Copenhagen's airport. And the infrastructure, the machinery in the sorting hall, is there."

The words Lars Thørgersen of CPH Design has just spoken might get past a layman as interesting but not heavily significant. If you're a designer, however, you've just heard a golden sound.

Note that Thørgersen said "implemented" -- the 3B Cart System, or 3B Aviation, as CPH Design prefers, is in use. Deployed. Proven. Working. Daily. Hourly. This one was for real even before it became a finalist for the INDEX:Award 2009.

And then note that Thørgersen refers to Copenhagen International Airport at Kastrup, one of the world's most acclaimed and innovative "air harbors."  At CPH, the 3B Aviation program is handling some 50 percent of the luggage of SAS Scandinavian Airlines, a partner in developing the system. It is no mean feat to get a new baggage-handling design tried out at, say, a small rural airport in the midwestern United States. It is a major accomplishment to debut that system at one of Europe's main hubs and one of the world's key airports.

In fact, if anything, it might someday be appropriate for the INDEX: jury to consider CPH Design's business-savvy approach to design, itself. More about that shortly.

First, a look at the players.

3B Aviation is a company formed around the concept development work carried out by CPH Design initially for SAS Ground Service (SGS) and Copenhagen Airport (CPHA), with a goal of a holistic view on the whole process.

The project was conceptually developed in collaboration with the ground handler personnel and the respective managements of the airport and ground handlers, with a clear set of interests including minimizing human intervention (no manual lifting); increasing capacity in the sorting hall; increasing efficiency; and tracking/tracing capability throughout the process.

In addition, the project contributed with the several built-in benefits including the use of 3B Carts for early storage, increased security and automated sorting of local and transfer luggage.

The details of the project were worked out in a collborative effort between SAS Ground Service, CPH Airport, CPH design and Crisplant. Specifically, Crisplant contributed development of the machinery that loads and receives luggage in the sorting hall, integrated with the sorting machine. This includes high level IT integration. And CPH Design developed the mobile linking part: the 3B Aviation Cart. The overall system is named RampMate.

Consider the physical 3B Cart, the vehicle moving the luggage. It's certainly a key to the design and its recognition by the INDEX: jury. Based in a simple gravity-feed construct, it is loaded automatically with 40 to 45 pieces of luggage which are on sloped, rolling shelves. Whether going in or out of the aircraft, there's no human lifting going on.

But here's the bigger picture: "An airport has two major flows to manage," Thørgersen says, "passengers and luggage. And the luggage is dealt with by two organizations. It is the airport that owns the infrastructure, bolted to the floor. And other side is a company that refers to itself as a 'system integrator.' The intriguing part is that the 'system integrator' knows nothing about what's going on out on the ramp where the airplanes are.

"Sure, sorting the luggage is part of the value -- where these 'system integrators' do great machinery and all the IT. But the luggage has to go all the way to and from the airplane out on the ramp. Not just in the sorting hall. And you have hundreds of chutes where luggage is coming to different destinations. That is dealt with by a ground-handling company, which will buy all the equipment it needs from a ground-equipment manufacturer. And guess what: The ground-equipment manufacturer knows nothing about the sorting hall.

"So this was  our starting point. Realizing that there's a big gap in a process that should be integrated. So 3B is a paradigm shift. Normally, you have two different organizations buying the respective equipment they need from different vendors.

"The 3B system brings speed to the whole process and can track luggage everywhere in the airport. When the luggage is brought into the 3B Cart at the AMU (automatic makeup unit), that luggage is registered in the IT system. You want one destination for each cart.

"Then when you take it to the aircraft, the ground handler has a barcode hand-scanner. He scans the 3B Cart. When he does that, he gets a picture that tells him whether any of the eight shelves of luggage he has contains any bags that are not fully cleared by security for loading. When he gets the signal that something isn't cleared, he can tell which piece on a given shelf is not OK-ed to be loaded yet.

"Now this goes all the way back to Lockerbie," the 1998 case in which the in-air demise of Pan Am 103 was accomplished by getting an unaccompanied bag onto the plane. "You are not allowed now to fly with luggage from passengers who are not on the plane. So this is about reconciliation" of luggage and passengers.

"And we have made this much more secure than before. The same process happens when the handler gets the luggage off the aircraft. No more looking at printed papers" to figure out which pieces are cleared by security to move forward.

OK, but we're inside at the baggage carousel waiting for our luggage. What about that speed we'd all like to see more of when it comes to retrieving our bags?

"The handler now brings the luggage into the automatic discharge system," Thørgersen says, "where it takes about one minute 40 seconds to get 80 to 90 pieces of luggage into the system. Without touching any of it. Because it's just rolling out."

And there's a split available, between what is local luggage and what is transit luggage. Before, that split had to be done at the aircraft, and the luggage had to be driven two different places. Now, it goes to one place, and splits automatically.

What's, more the 3B Aviation system provides a solution for a problem common to many major air hubs in convention cities. "Let's say a convention of doctors is going to Tivoli Gardens today before flying out tonight," Thørgersen says. "They want to get rid of their luggage for the day. The 3B system carts can simply be loaded, moved outside" of the active baggage routing "and then returned to six or eight hours later, ready for automatic processing. It works as a temporary storage facility, too."

The name 3B? When working on the design, "we called it 'Big Baggage Box,'" Thørgersen says. "And everybody kept referring to it as 'BBB' or '3B.' So we decided to call it '3B Aviation.'"

Thørgersen says that when studying system-design challenges, he looks for the "in-between" places that can't be handled by a robot. "A robot is good from A to B. But we look for what's between the action points, the 'in-betweens.' You can see operations that look very high-tech at the action points, and the in-betweens look like something from the Second World War."

And to get back to an earlier point, it's worth noting the business approach issue that CPH Design is addressing. This has to do with the fact that the 3B Aviation system is in place and working at Copenhagen, developed with aviation industry partners there and headed for another launch in Munich in the fall.

"We're trying to find new ways," Thørgersen says, "to do design as a business.

"In Denmark, the typical process is that a designer initially works for nothing in creating a design. And then you get royalties. So a designer will work on something for five to 15 years before there are enough royalties built up to make a living. Well, that makes it very difficult to build up a running cash-flow and create a real business. Most people don't want to pay anything to a designer until it's at the royalty stage.

"So here at CPH design, we're trying to make some risk assessments, some market surveys and say, 'OK, here is one we think we can drive to a big value in different markets. So we'll take this on, ourselves, but not just for royalties but we own it. The value increases as it goes to market. We want to have a part and stake of that value increase. Because we created it."

Designed by:
CPH Design, Copenhagen, Denmark.

www.3baviation.com
www.crisplant.dk