SubscribeNow a preferred baggage system partner at London Heathrow, ALSTEC undertakes its core tasks of operating, maintaining and improving airport baggage handling systems with authority and confidence.
Reasons for the company's success in this sector include its preference for partnership agreements, team-working ethos, well developed project management processes, and proven ability to deliver its contracted services. Its profound understanding of structural, mechanical and electrical engineering is augmented by expertise in controls. Personnel liaise closely with customers to establish good communications and to foster a spirit of cooperation and mutual respect.
User-friendly systems are produced, which assist the processing of baggage by combining integrated sortation and storage with real-time monitoring.
Equipment
Products sourced from selected manufacturers and incorporated into the company's installations are mostly of modular design, and include various types of conveyors, carousels and sortation mechanisms, plus other specialized machines for handling, weighing and screening. Distributed PLC networking technology substantially reduces cabling requirements, simplifies maintenance, and lends itself to the phased extension of installations while keeping them in operation.
Sortation
Every incoming passenger bag is automatically sorted to the correct chute (or pier) by BAG-NAV - ALSTEC's baggage navigation system. The functionality of this suite of software extends to passenger pre-clearance arrivals control plus hold baggage tracking and screening, thereby providing complete bag histories from the point of arrival to the relevant flight make-up area.
BAG-NAV works with any relational database such as Oracle(r) or SQL Server(r). It uses a Microsoft Windows platform, and can even be run on a standard PC. Its design permits rapid configuration to conform to individual baggage handling installations, and it requires far less contract-specific software than other products.
The exceptional reliability of BAG-NAV is achieved by the use of two servers placed in different locations and operating in hot stand-by mode. Bi-directional replication of data ensures both machines remain fully up-to-date. One server acts as the master while the other mirrors all activity. In the event of a failure the slave immediately becomes the master so that the impact on operations is barely perceptible.
BAG-NAV is a multi-user system, with each user (such as a handling agent) seeing only the information that relates to its activities. The system operator manages access control through simple tables to which new users can be quickly added, with their rights customized to their specific needs.
Screening
Around 67 million bags per year currently pass through ALSTEC's 100% hold baggage screening (HBS) systems. These meet stringent security standards without resulting in delays to flights or procedural bottlenecks - thus avoiding inconvenience to passengers.
Their basic operational principle is to subject every departing bag, according to the risk it presents, to between one and four increasingly thorough screening procedures, at least the first of which is fully automated. Bags cleared at levels one, two or three proceed to flight make-up. Level four screening always entails passenger reconciliation, while the final measure is the safe disposal of suspect bags.
The scanning machines employed may incorporate X-ray, computer tomography or ion detection technologies. Their types and optimum numbers, along with their associated conveyor lines (arranged in tried and tested configurations), are specified in accordance with individual airport preferences and the prevailing national legislation. Some installations operate in conjunction with computer assisted passenger profiling, which provides a further tier of security.
Operation
Whole life support is supplied by ALSTEC 24 hours a day with or without an on-site engineering presence. Its priorities are to a) ensure the consistently smooth operation of a particular system, b) prevent problems from arising, c) resolve any which do occur, and d) maintain this situation through any subsequent upgrades or extensions. This service also covers installations originally created by third parties.
The company is also willing to take on responsibility for operating and maintaining complete baggage handling facilities. It is common for payment for these activities to have a significant performance related element, typically linked to annual service level agreements. (Exceeding these attracts bonuses, while failure leads to penalties.) ALSTEC now has over 300 employees engaged in airport operation and maintenance.
Overview
With headquarters at Whetstone in Leicester, UK, and wholly-owned French and UK subsidiaries, ALSTEC is a systems integrator: it provides solutions, rather than simply equipment. It has ISO 9001:2000 and ISO 9001:2000 Tick-IT accreditation, and ISO 14001 environmental management accreditation.
The company has provided major installations at Heathrow and Gatwick, and has carried out extensive work in Europe. It is an approved framework integrator for baggage handling and screening systems at each of BAA's seven UK airports.
For further information, contact ALSTEC Ltd., Cambridge Road, Whetstone, Leicester LE8 6LH, UK. Tel: +44 (0) 116 201 5057. Fax: +44 (0) 116 284 3851. Web site: www.alstec.com Email: airport.sales@alstec.com
