In today’s ever-improving quality of life, passengers expect a comfortable and efficient travel experience, and a missed flight can lead to a good trip or an important business negotiation being ruined – therefore, airport operators need to improve airport processing efficiency to meet the growing demand for passenger traffic. Security check and baggage handling are important links in airport operations, and a more automated and intelligent baggage detection process can ensure a good experience for passengers, reduce the pressure of airport operations, and improve service evaluation.

Vanderlande, a Dutch company founded in 1949, is a global leader in future warehousing systems, airport baggage handling automation and express sorting automation solutions. Vanderlander’s market-leading baggage handling systems handle more than 4 billion pieces of luggage worldwide each year, and they are active at more than 600 airports, including 12 of the world’s top 20 airports.

G771K201A In order to provide customers with future-oriented products and solutions, Vanderlander chose to work with Schneider Electric, and the two sides signed a strategic cooperation agreement in September 2022, and have since launched a broad and in-depth cooperation.

Van der Lande Logistics Automation System (Shanghai) Co., LTD. R & D Manager Chen said: “During the development of the Automatic Passenger Checkpoint at Van der Lande Airport, from simulation verification in the early stage, to virtual commissioning in the middle stage, to continuous operation and maintenance in the later stage, “Schneider Electric’s integrated hardware and software solution, which covers EcoStruxure™ ‘s three-tier architecture, helps us reduce project costs, accelerate product delivery, optimize the pre-sales experience for end users, replace physical sample lines with virtual inspection lines, and transform our business model.”

The “trouble” of traditional production line development

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Airports are important infrastructure for air transport and urban development, and the construction process is usually a huge investment, which can cost tens of billions. For airport builders and operators, time means money, so they want suppliers to be more efficient in providing high-quality products and solutions, which puts higher demands on Vanderlande.

G771K201A Due to the different internal structure and pattern, customers in different airports have customized requirements for baggage detection lines. According to the traditional model, when Van der Lande deployers new projects, including baggage detection lines, it is necessary to build a set of physical lines in the factory for the equipment that it wants to deliver to customers in the future, in order to verify the various problems that may occur in advance, and then undertake and implement the corresponding projects, which is obvious.

First, physical lines are expensive. Combining raw materials and labor costs, the cost of a set of physical lines may be as high as one million yuan, and for the customized needs of different airport customers, it is necessary to build corresponding physical lines and repeat costs.

Second, the cycle of the traditional model is longer. Traditional production line development is a “waterfall” process, that is, the completion of each stage of work is the premise for the start of the next stage of work, must wait until the physical line is completed before PLC debugging. This often leads to debugging work in the late stage of the project to start, the workload of PLC engineers is extremely unbalanced, the project is difficult to allocate engineers, the code quality cannot be guaranteed, and the project is under great pressure to deliver on time.

Finally, the flexibility of the traditional model is poor. On the one hand, the video and animation scripts in the traditional pre-sales plan have been fixed long ago, and the end users cannot freely adjust the viewing Angle and details, which may affect the end users’ understanding of the design ideas, and then affect the sales results. On the other hand, the overall effect of the project can only be seen after the completion of the physical production line, the cost of modification or optimization is too high, and the subsequent actual project is also different from the prefabricated line, there will be different proportions of customized parts, which need additional design verification. This will increase the overall project delivery risk and affect the end user acceptance results.