CASE STUDY

Barcelona’s Airport manages its baggage

trolleys more efficiently with a pioneering
real-time management system by Indra
Indra has recently deployed and The majority of trolleys are easy to find, concentrated
commissioned an innovative solution in certain logical locations, such as check-in zones or
to manage baggage trolleys in before security filters. Although these trolleys may be
Barcelona-El Prat Airport, Spain. easily located it is very important to maintain prompt
collection to prevent cluttering and congestion, which
The solution allows the real time can interfere with the passenger experience.
management of 5,000 baggage carts
distributed all over the terminal. However, outside of these common locations, trolleys
can become much more difficult to locate. Sometimes
In any airport, passengers always expect to find they are scattered around roads or car-parks,
baggage trolleys. Arriving at the airport by car, bus, constituting a safety concern. Lost and scattered
train or disembarking aircraft, passengers usually find trolleys result in a loss of time and resources, which
hundreds of them dispersed in different spaces in and translates to the bottom line, as well as a degradation
around the terminals. Users generally don’t tend to of the quality of service perceived.
care much about trolleys, dumping them in often Indra’s new Trolley Management System
peculiar places when they are no longer needed.
That’s where the new Trolley Management System by
Even in a new terminals, it is not uncommon to see a Indra comes to the rescue, as seen in Barcelona’s
lone traveler struggling to find a baggage trolley. If Terminal T1. It identifies where each and every trolley
this occurs too often, the airport operator will soon is whilst devising the necessary tactics in order to
feel the pressure to purchase new trolleys. But how match their locations with the passenger’s demand.
can the initial calculation on the number of required Trolley optimisation is facilitated in real-time, covering
trolleys have gone wrong? On occasion, even last minute changes in flights, seasonal peaks and
•  Need for an alarm after the airport has increased the number
system to prevent troughs and general passenger through-put
movements out of of trolleys, users’ perceptions don’t fluctuations.
the authorised improve, yet the trolleys
Troll
area malf ey
unct become increasingly Abnormal usage is also identified with the detection
due i o
to la ns •  Need for a
of trolleys in wrong or strange places. Unauthorised
ck system to difficult to manage.
main f o
tena monitor movements are promptly detected. The system
nce maintenance In this situation, a lot of
periods ensures that carts do not leave the authorised areas
baggage trolleys may be and that no trolley is left in a hazardous situation.
Loss of sitting idle in the
trolleys and
operational Unb terminal away from In a simple and intuitive graphical user interface the
a
interference ava lanced system displays all the information related to baggage
ilab tro trolley pick-up points.
pea ility du lley trolleys in real-time. Advanced algorithms present in
k ho ring The actual problem is
urs
not in the number of the application (Real Time Location Systems) make it
•  Need for a holistic trolleys, but rather in possible to map every trolley to a ‘real’ specific
vision of resources’ their proper alignment location that is then represented by means of a
demand and availability
with the travellers’ needs. Geographic Information System. This is a fundamental

Barcelona-El Prat
Airport (Spain)
commissioned a new
544.000 m2 terminal,
the sixth biggest in the
world, in 2009.
Approximately 5,000
baggage trolleys were
acquired for the new
terminal.
 The Trolley Management
System is integrated with
other airport systems whilst
configurable to airport
changing requirements.

It’s not only a pioneering

project because of its airport
application: it’s also the first
ever large-scale
implementation with 5,000
active WiFi tags being
dynamically located.

difference with RFID tags, which only installed by Indra. In this sense costs were Originally designed for the medical sector
INDRA AIRPORTS’ Success cases

allow trolley detection once a predefined able to be kept to a minimum by pigging to identify and monitor the precise
specific point is crossed (detection backing on existing IT infrastructure. location of sophisticated medical
arches). equipment and personnel, Indra was able
Industrial grade active WiFi tags were
to use its previous expertise to
in Barcelona’s airport, the different zones attached to each and every trolley with a
successfully roll out a similar solution in
have been mapped according to their unique identifier code. Small-sized and
the airport trolley environment.
operational usage, so the system is able to easily serviceable they are the active
identify which trolleys are stacked in the elements being tracked by the network. For Terminal T1’s implementation,
proper location, their number, which standardised industrial components were
Integrating with IT systems
trolleys are abandoned, and as the system chosen with their durability and resilience
functions in real-time, which trolleys are The application was integrated with the in mind.
currently being used and how. rest of the airport IT systems using an
It’s the first time that a large scale
Enterprise Application Integrator
Alarms can be configured to trigger on implementation like this is achieved. ❉
(middleware). This way, relevant
specific events such as the stack of
information is able to flow in and out of
trolleys reaching a threshold, the entrance
the system in a standardised fashion.
of a trolley in a forbidden zone or a trolley
about to cross the perimeter. The purpose of this integration in Benefits for the airport operator:
Barcelona’s airport was two-fold. Firstly, • Getting the most out of the existing
Further historical analysis can also be baggage trolleys.
the important amount of data gathered
displayed by graphics, charts and diagrams • Allows instant visibility and
can now be exploited in order to know accountability of baggage trolleys
allowing trolley statistics to be analysed in
more about the users and improve the status, whether managed by the
order to improve passenger flows.
service. And secondly, it was the airport operator or a third party.
Additionally, the supporting software responsibility of the airport managers to • Ability to identify bottlenecks and plan
for capacity. Accurate forecasting of
records the last time a specific trolley was track the performance of the
future needs.
serviced, and identifies the trolleys that concessionaire that had been awarded • Reducing subtractions and
should to be checked based on their trolley management. Fed into a business misplacements of trolleys.
operational time. Maintenance periods application, the airport operator is • Totally customisable to fit the
can, thus, be measured, controlled and capable of monitoring the compliance customers requirements.
• Different visualisations for different
optimised resulting in improved return on with service level agreements (SLAs).
user profiles.
investment for the airport. • Open system with easy integration
Indra’s broad experience - cross
with third parties via APIs.
An administration module is also provided, pollination
• No need to deploy a specific
enabling the configuration of indicators infrastructure for this service as it
Being a leading IT systems company that
and constraints, users, data available and used the existing WiFi network.
spans a wide range of industries, allows
maintenance scheduling. • Scalable. Can grow with the airports.
Indra to share solutions from one • Providing relevant information on
Using the existing WiFi network industry to meet challenges in another. trolley usage and passenger flows.
Indra’s WiFi trolley network is a prime • Ultimately, improving service to the
In Barcelona, the system was based on airport’s customers.
example of this cross pollination.
the existing corporate WiFi network, also

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Madrid (Spain)
T +34 91 480 60 04
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