Although most bags make it to their destination on-time, mishandled bags are costly to airports and airlines and damage relationships with their customers. The missed bag rate (MBR) is calculated for every bag per 1000 that fails to be loaded onto its intended flight. In collaboration with a large Canadian airline and airport, Brock Solutions recently developed and launched a pilot to reduce their MBR through new baggage room displays.

The project was implemented as a rapid prototype, allowing results to be evaluated in a few short weeks. Early results of the pilot show that the customers have improved their MBR by a half-point. Although this may seem insignificant, each missed bag costs an airport or airline around $150. When scaled to tens of millions of bags that travel through the airport annually, this could translate into a potential savings of $7.5 million.

The new display improves both baggage handling performance and user satisfaction. The flight and baggage data is collected by Brock Solutions’ SmartConnect and displayed at each lateral via SmartSuite. The displays help baggage handlers work more efficiently and make more informed decisions like when to deliver bags to the aircraft, improving on-time departures and reducing the occurrences of missed bags. The display also introduces gamification to the task of loading bags. Once baggage handlers have scanned 100% of the bags for a flight, a short fireworks animation appears (watch the video below). This brings out competitiveness among handlers, resulting in more bags scanned and fewer bags that contribute to the MBR.

Want to improve decision making and reduce your MBR? Contact us to learn more about SmartSuite and our baggage solutions.  

Brock Solutions is an engineering solutions and professional services company specializing in the design, build and implementation of real-time automation solutions for broad-based industrial/manufacturing and transportation/logistics organizations globally. With 600 employees, Brock Solutions is a privately held, employee-owned organization with over 30 years of experience in the real-time solutions space.  

SmartConnect is part of the SmartSuite Enterprise, which enables airports and airlines to deploy technology solutions that provide process automation and drive performance improvements. Whether its these or any of the other modules available, SmartSuite applications can be implemented as standalone systems or integrated with other modules, providing complete end-to-end tracking of passengers and their baggage.