Lyngsoe Systems helps Copenhagen Airport with baggage sorting from cruise ships
In order to better handle the large volumes of baggage from passengers on cruise ships, Copenhagen Airports (CPH) decided to automate the baggage sorting system and house it in an existing hangar.
The new stand-alone baggage sorting system in the renovated hangar was brought into use during the very busy summer period in 2011. In order to secure an efficient process and convivial work environment, a system with 100 percent automatic identification was identified as the most appropriate. Traditional printed barcode labels do not provide a sufficiently high read rate to support a completely automatic process or make for an ideal work environment so an RFID-based solution was chosen.
Søren Elkjær, Department manager Baggage Administration, CPH states “Lyngsoe Systems was chosen as our partner for the project due to their experience in the use of RFID for baggage sorting in other airports. RFID is a new technology for CPH, and it was, therefore, with great pleasure that we saw the technology working correctly from the very first busy day in operation in the summer 2011. The RFID solution has proven to be so robust that we have not had a single day of interruption in operations. For CPH, the spin-off benefit from the project is that the RFID technology has now been tested in a limited, but live production environment. This means that CPH is in a strong position to implement RFID when it becomes used routinely in the European air transport sector”.
When the passengers leave a cruise ship in Copenhagen to fly home, a large volume of baggage has to be handled in a short period of time. Sixteen new check-in positions have been installed to receive the baggage, where an RFID tag is attached before the bag runs to the carousel. Eight chutes on the carousel can be allocated to a flight. Once a piece of baggage reaches the right chute, the RFID system visually alerts the operator to indicate that the bag is for this flight.
As well as being quicker and more efficient, automatic sorting minimizes the manual handling of baggage and this enhances the work environment, a major reason for the refurbishment at CPH.