SubscribeFor more than 10 years, Amsterdam Airport Schiphol and Incontrol are working closely together to create, improve and maintain simulation models of the baggage handling processes and systems.
In these years, the level of application changed from small sized models that were used only for one specific goal to large scale models, which are widely used and automatically generated.
Amsterdam Airport Schiphol
Amsterdam Airport Schiphol is one of the largest European airports. Currently, Amsterdam Airport Schiphol handles over 40 million passengers annually. Amsterdam Airport Schiphol is one of the two European hubs of Air France / KLM, the largest airline group in the world. This means that a large number of passengers are visiting the airport as a transfer passenger.
The baggage handling system is an important part of the airport infrastructure. The system transports, screens and sorts the bags of all passengers. The available time is limited: all bags have to be ready 10-15 minutes before flights are departing.
For the next years, the airport foresees a further increase in traffic. To accommodate this traffic, the baggage handling system needs to be expanded. Amsterdam Airport Schiphol has set up a dedicated programme to be able to handle 70 million bags per year. Also KLM’s baggage handling process is subject of investigation and improvement.
Amsterdam Airport Schiphol capacity managers are using SamantaŽ to identify bottlenecks, to optimize the available capacity and to determine the future capacity requirements. Also in the area of baggage handling Samanta is applied, both for short and long term simulations.
More than 10 years of baggage simulation
Figure 1. Samanta Baxsim simulation model
Incontrol has been simulating the baggage handling systems at Schiphol for more than a decade. During this period many things have changed, not only technically but also in how simulation is used.
10 years ago, the simulation projects were often initiated to evaluate capacity requirements of a new system part. A simulation model was developed for this specific part, and some simulation experiments were performed. After the results were reported, the project ended and the model was not used any more.
A few years later, most of the baggage handling system was modeled as independent models. The capacity of the systems was reaching its limits due to a large increase in baggage flow. The urge for simulation became very high to find short term and long term solutions in order to increase and optimize the capacity of the systems. Optimizing subsystems (using the previously built models) was not an option, because this could result in bottlenecks in other subsystems. Therefore, a new integral model of the entire baggage handling systems was developed. This model “Simbax” is reflecting the current situation of the system in detail.
The Simbax model is relatively easy to maintain. It is built withvalidated Samanta BaxsimŽ components and divided in several sub models. So in many projects, only one or two sub models have to be updated, instead of the entire model.
With Simbax it is still possible to evaluate capacity requirements, but also to test planned changes in the system controls. One year after Simbax was realized, it had become an important tool. Investment decisions were not taken without a Simbax approval.
More recently, simulation has also become a design supporting tool. The time to create simulation models has been reduced further, amongst others by XML-technology. Vanderlande Industries – main supplier of baggage handling systems at Schiphol – is designing the future baggage handling systems. New designs are imported into the simulation environment automatically from XML files. This way simulation results are available at an early stage, so the design can be easily improved if necessary.
Vanderlande Industries simulates High speed Baggage sorting systems
The design models (future situation) and Simbax (the model of the current system) are both based on the same Enterprise Dynamics platform and are developed in such a way that the models can be combined and integrated. For Schiphol it is important gain insight in the performance of the entire system during the implementation phase of the new infrastructure, Simulation gives insight in the effects on the total system and can be used to evaluate fallback scenarios.
Conclusions
The use of simulation has been changed from one-off local models to integral models, which are used and maintained frequently. Technically, this became possible by more powerful computers, the use of specific simulation objects (Samanta Baxsim), and more recently the ability to generate models automatically from design environments using XML.
Simulation has proven to be successful. The confidence in simulation remains very high, and has been accepted broader, also on a management level. When developing costly and complex systems (like Baggage handling systems) it is important to validate and improve the design as soon as possible so the airport and other stakeholders can be convinced that the system will meet the requirements. Simulation is also used to test new ideas and improve designs in early stages. This results in cheaper and better performing baggage handling systems.
