february2022 - 30

Drive Reliability in
Your Baggage System
New innovations in baggage handling system drives
provide more reliability and predictive maintenance
to keep luggage moving.
BY JOE PETRIE
VDG gears are manufactured
to AGMA 12 standards, that
is honed and ground for low
noise standards to 46db.
U
pgrading an airport baggage handling system
offers airports a unique opportunity to address
operational reliability, sustainability and a better
passenger experience knowing luggage will get to the
travelers in a timely fashion.
Energy efficient components are becoming more prevalent
in baggage handling systems. Efficiency is a quantifiable
standard established by the International Electrotechnical
Commission (IEC). The standard defines five International
Efficiency (IE) classes for single-speed electric motors,
related to efficiency, power output and size for motors.
Picking a motor type for your drivetrain can be difficult,
as each has advantages and disadvantages.
Reliable Systems Keep Bags Moving
Airports and airlines need to keep their baggage handling
systems online to ensure traffic keeps moving and delays
aren't created by broken systems.
" What I'm seeing is everyone looking to put their best
foot forward, " says James Chandler, key markets manager
for Nord Drivesystems. " How efficient can I be? Is it from a
retrofit or is it looking at a full CAPEX project to renovate or
upgrade the complete system? In many cases, airports are
taking a deep dive into looking at how they upgrade
and be efficient. "
30 || Ground Support Worldwide || February 2022
Chandler says U.S. airports want network connection of
their systems to keep on top of their performance and provide
a tool for predictive maintenance. This gives customers
and end users oversight of their systems. Visibility also helps
with efficient commissioning and seeing what drives are up
and which are down, etc.
Monitoring these elements provides feedback on how a
system is performing and data trends will show when an
item needs to be addressed before failure.
" It's not just all about more efficiency. It's all about durability
and uptime, " Chandler says. " All airports are looking at
reliability and being up when those bags need to get on the
next airport and keeping in line with the traveler's schedule. "
Predictive analytics monitors live operational data measured
by various sensors and compares it to historical data
to identify abnormalities within the measurements and uses
probability through machine learning to predict necessary
repairs and imminent component failures.
Larry Studdiford, president, Studdiford Technical
Solutions, LLC says a good predictive analytics platform
can provide many operational benefits; the most promising
being the ability to develop a planned, versus a reactionary,
maintenance and repair schedule. This reduces the number
of surprise outages and potentially helps reduce the
staff headcount.
VAN DER GRAAF
february2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of february2022
