Baggage Handling By Airlines

One of the major problem faced by the airlines is how to handle the baggage of the fliers ? lost baggage, delayed baggage arrival and other baggage related issues are quite mundane with airlines.Airlines try to compete with each other in terms of better in flight services, pretty air hostesses, timely arrival and departures but baggage handling is one area which is often neglected.
It is estimated that annually $760 millions are spend by the airlines on this problem of lost or misplaced baggages on addition to it is the cost related to increased safety measures due to increased instances of terror threats.Unaccompanied baggage is not allowed to be loaded in passenger flights and reconciliation of tags with the passengers who have already boarded the flight is a cumbersome process.

Airline baggages is fixed with large stick -on bar code tag at the time of luggage check in.The luggage then move on various conveyors which have bar code readers mounted on them to scan each baggage that come in its effective range. The problem with this system are that bar-code reader require clear lie of sight , in case the tag is misaligned, it cannot be read. labels are often unreadable due bunching of baggages owing to improper loading by the staff deployed.Tags may be worn out or dirty enough to make it impossible for bar code reader to read them.
The baggage is then Routed to correct bay where a baggage carrying trucks ensure pickup and delivery to the right aircraft. As the baggage is loaded in the hold of the aircraft they are once again scanned by the bar code scanner to scan each piece of baggage and information is relayed to central computer that which bags have made it to aircrafts hold.
During this time passenger begin boarding the aircraft,their boarding passes are swiped and this data is fed automatically into the computer system. Now this data is available as passenger manifest, which tells the airline staff which of the checked in passenger actually boarded the aircraft.This is tallied with passengers baggage and one to many relationship is established between passenger and pieces of baggage.All this process ensure that unaccompanied baggage should not be travelling in the aircraft.

 In case it is found that unaccompanied bag is being loaded into the hold, that bag is unloaded from the hold which is quite complicated as the baggage attended has to enter the hold and search for that bag amongst the clutter of bags with only hand held bar code scanner at his disposal.It also poses other problem such as whether this bag was supposed to be loaded in some other aircraft but due to improper reading was loaded in tis aircraft.This entails manual intervention on part of airline and coordinating with various people to reunite the passenger with his bag.In case of transit passenger the situation worsens as bags and passenger moves from one terminal to the next.

Instead of ordinary bar code stick-on labels , RFID inlay stick-on labels can be used.These have printed portions as well as RFID tag inlay which be either a read only or write once read many type.These tags can be read by RFID readers mounted at various locations on conveyor belts.

The advantages of such system are :

• Many bags can be read at a time unlike bar code scanners. This speeds up baggage handling process.
• RFID readers can read tags even if they are misaligned or dirty.
• Retrieving bag from hold is easy as hand held reader need not to be in line of sight and it can read multiple bag tags simultaneously.

This technology is presently being used in major airports of the world which have lot of traffic due to transit passengers for example Hong Kong airport.

Emirates Airline Employee with RFID Tag on Bag 

Future Scenario:

• IATA may make it compulsory for all airlines as well airports to install RFID reader systems and tags.
• Government and security agencies would also promote the initiative for enhance security of the airports and flights.
• Newer or airports undergoing up gradation to newer control and automation system may provide facilities for both bar code reader as well RFID for baggage handling to ensure maximum passenger friendly environment. 

Anti-Theft Systems

It was not long ago that anti theft systems placed in the shopping malls and large stores were CCTV cameras and store personnels keeping an eye on shoppers.These provisions were not sufficient to stop shoplifting incidents.In case of stores selling expensive items such as diamonds, jewellery's etc  such incidents could result in large losses.

Initially RFID tags and systems were introduced in the shops selling expensive items where the return on investment is justified but as price of such system declined over the time on the other hand cost of manpower is increased, these system became common in supermarkets and shopping malls. Management relies on these system heavily to stop the cases of theft. CCTV cameras are used only as a backup device.These devices can alert security personnel as soon as theft takes place unlike CCTV in which sometimes it takes hours of labor to go through video footages to identify the thief.

CCTV View of a Store

Stores place RFID Anti-theft tag on merchandise for their protection.These tags are reusable which ensure that once the item is sold tag can be used for other items.These tags are attached by the mean of plastic string or band with high tensile strength to ensure that they cant be broken easily. If someone  tries to walk out of store with the merchandise , RFID door antennae placed near the exit will detect the presence of tag and sound the alarm. However in case of genuine shopper, near the checkout counter tag will be removed by the store personnel by cutting the string and no alarm will be raise when person walks out with the item. several times disposable tags is used by the stores so they are subjected to high electromagnetic radiation by the store personnel to destroy the tag . In this case as the person walks out of the store tag though physically present would not cause the raising of alarm.

RFID Door Antenna

RFID Tag Placed on Items

Future Scenario:


It is believed that almost all stores will implement this anti theft technology as their cost will keep on falling owing to large demand , large supply and modified cost effective technology.The large use of the same is also due to disliking of crude methods like frisking by the genuine shoppers. there is always a fear of harming the relationship with the customers.by such measures of security.Even retailers will start using RFID tags for the purpose of tracking inventory, shelf replenishment and collecting information about the buyer behavior.However simple anti theft tags would not cater to all these operations so more technically advanced tags will be needed integrating all the operations.

FuelDispensing Using RFID

Many industries as well as transport companies own large fleet of trucks for transporting the raw materials and finished product periodically from production units or ware houses to distribution or storage points.Hence in the process frequent refueling of the trucks at fuel station are required.Some of these companies have installed fuel stations in their own yards to provide easier access to the fuel to their fleet of trucks.

Driver takes the truck to the fueling station and authorization is based on personal identification of the driver , it creates the scope of misuse as the identification is based on personal relationship.It is difficult to track which truck goes to which fueling station and whether refueling was necessary at that moment.there is sufficient time lag between the event of occurrence of such misuse and its knowledge to management.

Manual Gasoline Dispenser

RFID enabled fuel dispensing unit can be installed at the fuel filling stations.Similarly RFID tags can be fitted in trucks.As the truck approaches the filling station unit RFID reader can recognize the authenticity of truck and allow or deny the fueling.Once the fueling is over the pump shuts and information about the truck such as (truck number, type, drivers id)  and fuel dispensing information such as(amount filled, date, time) is relayed immediately to concerned offices of both trucking as well fuel dispensing company which helps in keeping the track of truck being filled.

RFID Enabled Fuel Dispenser

Advantages of using this RFID technique in fuel dispensing are :

• Fuel station can be unmanned as identification is  based on RFID tags and not personally.
• Faster, secure authorization at the filling stations.
• Real time track of trucks and fuel filling informations helps in optimizing operations.
• Billing errors can be minimized as it enables daily reporting between the trucking and fuel supplying company.

Future Scenarios:

 This application can be extended to automated filling and dispatching of chemicals in the chemical tankers by the chemical manufacturing companies.chemical manufacturing plants can then carry on their loading and dispatching operations with minimal manpower and can ensure right quantity of chemical is filled and entire information with time is recorded in batch controller and transmitted to central control system.

Applications in Event Management

Football World Cup

Be it Football world cup, rock show , college Fest or any other large scale event it is always challenging to manage the same.The challenge faced by the organizers is to mange the the crowd of people out of which many are fanatics and emotionally attached to the event. Many of the same try entering the event without the genuine ticket and to restrict such activities is a tough task faced by the organizers.It has also been noticed due to the large demand which causes shortage of ticket many people are being fooled by the counterfeiters who sold them fraudulent tickets.

considering the present scenario, the problem we are facing is that normal printed tickets are to be manually checked. This requires large number of authorized people at the entrance gates who will check the tickets of each and every person which could be time consuming.Besides this these tickets can be easily counterfeited and it is often seen that organizers themselves can't distinguish between real and fake tickets thus allowing the entry at the same seat to two different persons resulting in a brawl inside the event.Bar coded tickets were introduced for automated gate keeping resulting in faster process of ticket checking but still the bar-codes can be counterfeited with ease.

Printed tickets with RFID inlay can be the solution of this problem. This tickets looks similar to a printed one but it has a passive RFID inlay within it. This inlay is a read only tag identified by the reader even from a distance hence it is possible to implement both automated doors with reader or security guards with hand held readers to facilitate the process of ticket checking.

RFID Ticket Reader Doors

The advantages this RFID inlay tickets have are  :

•  No possibility of counterfeiting as it impossible to guess the original serial number and to make or source RFID inlay matching the original one.
• Faster scanning of RFID tags on tickets at access gates enables in smooth crowd management

RFID Ticket at Beijing Olympics

Future Scenarios:

Beijing Olympics had successfully implemented RFID tickets which has paved the way to use these tickets to such events in which large crowds are expected.These tickets could even be extended to local transport system such as metro trains which handles large crowd on daily basis.

  

Animal Identification

Looking back into the history; people are always possessive about their cattle or animals. Several methods had been adopted to distinguish animals of one owner from another like iron branding in which symbol or name of the ranch is branded on the skin of animal to identify the ranch to which it belong. Red hot iron is used for branding the animals hide which was quite painful.

The need for the labeling of animals is because of the fact that most of the time animals graze in the common grazing area and it avoids dispute arising from the right of ownership of the animals. Disadvantages of the above method were that identification has to be done manually and it was quite painful for animals

Branding of animals
With the advancements of time branding was replaced by plastic or metal tags tied to the animals. However this was usually done for the cattle and identification has to be still done manually. Another problem faced was the cases of lost pets identification which could only be done by some crude methods like birth marks which are not very reliable to ensure the fool proof identification.

Plastic Tags

As the RFID came into the picture; the old plastic tags are being replaced by RFID tags, they are mounted in the same old fashion but it has many more advantages. Even Injectable RFID tags are now available which can be injected through special syringe to remain under the skin of animal. There is no outer mark for other person to know the location of the tag so the chances of tampering of the tags are minimal. The chip inside the tag is read only so data once entered cannot be modified. These tags are being successfully used for pets today; these tags have a life span of 25 years which is generally more than the life span of pet. They can be placed on any pet irrespective of its size. As the tag is inserted inside the skin the tags can’t get dirty or lost. These tags can be scanned by the remote reader. The number of RFID tag is unique to avoid any dispute arising from the duplication.

The scanning of the animal can be done through the remote RFID scanner or the portable one. The RFID reader is connected to the remote database which contains the unique RFID number, Animals date of birth, medical history, last vaccination date and other identification marks.

                                                    

Injectible RFID Tags

Some of the advantages of using the RFID system are:

• ·        Not painful to animal
  ·        Tags not externally visible
  ·        Keeps record of vaccination, medical history, health checkups etc.
  ·        No chance of duplication due to unique number
  ·        Automated identification
  ·        Provides audit trail traceability for food safety in case of cattle
  
  
  Future scenarios:
  
  
  ·        These systems can be used on endangered species which would enable environmental agencies to monitor the number of species. Although radio tagging is being used in some places but majority of them are using crude methods like animal dropping etc for the animal census. This could also prevent poaching as animals hunted would be easily known.
  ·        It is possible that government by law made it mandate to tag all the animals. Pet tagging would be enable better health record of them while livestock tagging enable government to have better monitoring of their food supply chain.
  ·        International bodies may mandate all food produced from farm animals may require traceability of the animals from which food was made. Thus record from animals can give clues to prevent unknown diseases from being spreading into humans.
  ·        Keeping the medical track of animals may prevent the spreading of diseases like swine flu by early desolation of the infected animal.