baggage – The OM Blog by Heizer, Render, & Munson

OM in the News: The Solution to the Lost Luggage Problem

An unclaimed bag at the Charlotte N.C. Airport

The airline industry says its rate of mishandled baggage is lower than ever, down more than 12% from 2015 and the lowest ever recorded. “Much of the reduction is due to investments by airlines in technology improvements,” writes The New York Times (May 16, 2017). Still, that is small comfort to the lone traveler waiting by a deserted carousel with a sinking feeling.

There are myriad reasons a bag can go missing. “Weather and missed connections are by far the largest proportion of causes for bags not arriving on time,” says Delta’s VP. “We’ve invested about $50 million in deploying baggage tech across our organization,” he said. That investment includes integrating baggage data into the Delta mobile app. “If you’re traveling and you check a bag, you get a push notification when your bag is loaded.”

New technology and better baggage handling procedures had paid off, but the drop also coincided with the major carriers beginning to charge passenger fees for checking a bag. Those fees reduced the number of travelers checking bags.

Bag tags are now embedded with RFID chips, which means the location of bags is tracked and electronically crosschecked against a database to make sure that they are in the right place at the right time. This increases security, since each bag is linked to a ticketed passenger. It also speeds up the discovery of a bag in the wrong place so the process of reconnecting a bag to its owner can begin sooner.

At most U.S. airports, the airlines have operational control of their terminals, so it is incumbent on them to add new technology. By June, 2018, all airlines must maintain an accurate inventory of passenger baggage by tracking when each piece of checked luggage moves on, off or between planes.

Classroom discussion questions:

Discuss how Alaska Air guarantees its 20 minute baggage delivery. (See the Video Case Study in Chapter 7).
What is the role of RFID in baggage tracking?

OM in the News: RFID and Luggage Tracking

Radio chips are embedded in the tags being used at Las Vegas' airport ensure that suitcases move more quickly and accurately through the system. — Radio chips are embedded in the tags being used at Las Vegas’ airport ensure that suitcases move more quickly and accurately through the system.

One of my favorite new video cases for this edition is called Alaska Airlines: 20-Minute Baggage Process–Guaranteed! in Chapter 7. This is great example of process analysis and how OM can be applied in a way to improve customer service in the airline industry. And industry-wide, airlines show a steadily decreasing likelihood of bags going astray. Last year had the lowest rate of wayward luggage — 6.5 bags per 1,000 — in the past 12 years. Why?

Various advances in technology and bag-handling procedures deserve credit, including improvements over the years in the bar-coded tags and optical scanners that have long been in use for identifying and sorting checked luggage. Where bar-coded tags fall short is if the tag is wrinkled, smudged or torn, or not in line of sight of the scanner. If the tag is not readable, the bag can get lost without being noticed. Bar code readers have a “read rate” of only 80%- 95% of baggage tags.

“That is why the industry is intent on improving the tracking rate by looking beyond the 30-year-old baggage bar code,” writes The New York Times (Aug.23, 2016). They are adopting RFID tags that do not need to be seen to be read. Embedded chips can store travel information and need to be only close to radio scanners along the way for the bag’s progress to be recorded. Fliers can use travel apps to keep track of their bags. Delta is spending $50 million on the necessary scanners, printers and radio tags, which look little different from conventional bar-code tags. The system is now in place at all of the 344 airports into which Delta flies.

R.F.I.D. technology is hardly new, of course. But updating to the latest technology requires infrastructure changes that can be expensive and disruptive. And because most airports leave it to each airline to handle its own bag-checking system, the technology and procedures vary widely.

Classroom discussion questions:

What are the advantages of RFID over bar codes?
What does Alaska Air do to make sure bags arrive in 20 minutes?

OM in the News: Redesigning the Overhead Baggage Bin

Frustrated at having his own carry-on bag taken from him when overhead bins filled, Boeing engineer Brent Walton asked the question many travelers ask: “Why don’t planes have enough bin space for all passengers?” Then he figured out a solution—make bins tall enough so you can turn bags on their side, like standing up books on a shelf rather than laying them flat.

Boeing’s new Space Bin increases the number of bags a typical plane can carry by nearly 50%, reports The Wall Street Journal (Oct.15, 2015). A single-aisle Boeing 737-900 with 181 seats has room for 57 more bags, or a total of 174 rollaboard bags. That’s enough to accommodate a planeload of passengers with room for their coats. The space bins are big enough so you can actually stack two bags on top of each other or push two in sideways together. Alaska Airlines took delivery of the first Space Bin 737 on Friday and will put it into service this week. The new design can be retrofitted into most 737s, the most common plane in airline fleets, and it doesn’t add any weight to the airplane. Alaska has decided to retrofit its 737s and install big bins on new planes.

Passenger surveys show the lack of overhead space is one of the biggest gripes about airline travel today. Boarding a plane has dramatically changed because of the carry-on crunch. Gate agents wrest bags from passengers in late boarding groups to tag them for checking. Some airlines have baggage tag printers at gates for all the bags that don’t fit in overhead bins. And flights get delayed when too many passengers can’t find room for their bags.

Classroom discussion questions:

Why is this new product design (or redesign) so important to airline operations managers?
How will the new layout impact the boarding process/time?

OM in the News: Airlines and the Digital Bag Tag

Airlines are adding new technology to improve and automate how they handle and track bags

“For decades, fliers have checked their bags the same way: hand them to an airline employee and trust that they will reappear at the destination,” writes The Wall Street Journal (July 6, 2015). Now big changes to that model are coming as airlines look to streamline the airport experience—and pass more work to customers and machines.

Their latest ideas including letting fliers tag their own bags, print luggage tags at home and track their bags on smartphones. Later this year, some fliers in Europe likely will begin using what could be the future of flying luggage: permanent bag tags that digitally update if flight plans change. Improved technology and loosened security rules are accelerating changes to baggage handling. More than 1/3 of global airlines now ask fliers to tag their own bags, compared with 13% in 2009. By 2018, 3/4 of carriers intend to offer the service.

Airlines say such technology isn’t intended to reduce staff, but instead free workers to handle customer problems. From 2004 to 2014, a period in which airlines added many self-service technologies like kiosks, the number of U.S. ticket agents fell about 13.5% to 138,000. U.S. airline passengers increased 8.6% to 761 million over that period.

The biggest of the coming changes is permanent bag tags, electronic devices that strap on to frequent fliers’ luggage and digitally display their flight information. The tags display bar codes like a traditional tag, allowing them to work with existing infrastructure. Fliers update the tags via Bluetooth from their smartphones, and the airline can also remotely update the tag if its owner gets rerouted. Air France KLM is also releasing a bag tracker that goes inside luggage. The device uses satellite data to give travelers the bag’s location and light sensors to alert them if the bag is opened en route. Tracking should help reduce the rate of mishandled bags world-wide, though airlines in 2014 lost 7.3 bags per 1,000 fliers, compared with 13.2 bags in 2003.

Classroom discussion questions:

1. Why are airlines encouraging the process change?

2. What is the downside of the new system?

OM in the News: Improving the Airline Baggage Claim Process

In 2007, airlines world-wide mishandled 47 million bags, or 19 per 1,000 passengers. Lost baggage was costing the airline industry $4 billion a year. Returning delayed or lost luggage to passengers cost an average of $100 per bag, and there had been a steady increase in the frequency of mishandled baggage. But airlines last year mishandled only 22 million bags, or 7 per 1,000 passengers, reports The Wall Street Journal (June 5, 2014). Why the dramatic change?

One big factor was that airlines realized when they started charging fees for baggage, customer expectations would rise. Airlines typically spent as little as possible on baggage handling before fees because it didn’t drive revenue. Now baggage was bringing in money and new equipment was easier to justify. Bag fees also reduced the volume of checked baggage, as passengers carried more on board. Airports got more involved and some invested in new innovations to move bags faster from the curb to the airplane belly. TSA sped up the process by moving baggage screening from terminal lobbies to machines built into conveyor-belt systems that can check bags faster.

Airlines also focused attention on the problem by sending teams of baggage experts to 80 airports world-wide and evaluating root causes of lost bags. One of the biggest issues they found: Airlines did a poor job communicating with each other and their own employees about bags. Baggage handlers often didn’t know when a bag was coming from another carrier or when a quick transfer had to be made. Another simple fix: Keeping tag printers clean and well-maintained so bar codes print crisply for machine-reading.

Airlines say the effort coincided with availability of cheaper technology for scanning bag tags and tracking bags. Key infrastructure such as airport Wi-Fi that could be used by hand-held scanners and computers mounted in baggage vehicles also made a difference. Finally, with more data available, airlines can tell baggage handlers when to shuttle connecting bags from plane to plane directly, and when there’s enough time to put bags into the airport’s sorting system so they can go out to their next flight with other luggage.

Classroom discussion questions:

1. Why did airlines decide to improve baggage handling processes?

2. What tools in Chapter 7 can be used to analyze this process?