Airport gives advanced baggage-handling system the boot
By Bill Schweber -- EDN, October 27, 2005
Ongoing problems with the advanced, automated baggage-handling system delayed the opening of the Denver International Airport for 16 months until February 1995. Now-defunct BAE Automated Systems designed the system.* The system's cost zoomed from an estimated total of $185 million to more than $300 million, due to extra engineering and debugging costs, interest, and penalties.
With 26 miles of track, the system was supposed to shunt bags in small, gray carts from source to destination, tracking and steering the carts onto conveyor tracks. A central computer would track carts in real time and would control per-cart steering. But tracking the carts and dealing with inevitable spills, pileups, breakdowns, and other deviations from ideal overwhelmed the system. After years of trying to fix it or work around it, airport officials have shut down the system. They are dismantling its parts and selling them off for scrap. They plan to replace the system with a more manual one employing handheld bar-code readers and lots of people. You can get more details at http://ntl.bts.gov/DOCS/rc9535br.html.
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There is a significant inaccuracy in this story on the closing of Denver Airport’s failed automated baggage-handling system. The story states that the systems integrator, BAE Automated Systems, designed the system using the Wonderware InTouch human-machine interface. This is patently incorrect. The system was not designed using InTouch. Wonderware products were never part of the original system design specification. In fact, InTouch was brought into the project well after the problem-plagued baggage-handling system was operational in order to help the airport troubleshoot critical malfunctions and constant breakdowns. InTouch was deployed as an 11th-hour add-on electronic monitoring system to help technicians manually clear snarled luggage jamming the system’s automated conveyors.
Mark Davidson, Vice President, Global Marketing, Wonderware - 2005-8-11 08:25:00 PST -
Wow Your article really takes the heat on Wonderware, which is underserved and untrue. The original system was not designed with WW, in fact was designed by BAE with other HMI products. Wonderware was used in the redesign, but is only the HMI Viewing product with some traking. The failed system revolves around the logic in the controllers, and the mechanical system.
It is sad that today, the reports don't come out with the facts. Your links will not be forewarded to my customers. I sell Wonderware, but not at the time that this system was installed, but I used Wonderware for years over all other products. I've been in the Automation industry for over 23 years, and have used many different products. No HMI product should have took the heat on this artical.
Poor reporting!!
Kevin Rohr - 2005-7-11 08:37:00 PST -
Hello Bill,
A 2005 news item about project problems in 1995, quoting a 1994 report? I presume you had some more recent information that prompted you to publish this!
As a former Invensys SCADA employee I know that InTouch has been around since 1987, but Wonderware was only acquired by Foxboro (which became part of Siebe which then merged into Invensys) after 1998.
The problems in this case were with the specifiers and the integrator (BAE) in designing an over-ambitious system and failing the implementation, rather than with their GUI software supplier.
Anyway, it is not necessarily a bad thing to employ more people rather than machines!
Best regards, David.
David Leske - 2005-2-11 14:24:00 PST
