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Denver Airport Automated Baggage System Abandoned
cherylchase writes "Denver International Airport opened in 1995 with an ambitious fully automated baggage system: 26 miles of underground track, thousands of small gray carts, all controlled by a mainframe programmed for just in time delivery. But the system never worked well; bugs delayed the airport's opening for months (at $1M/day). The system has now been abandoned as a cost cutting measure." From the article: "Technology, too, has brought change. Back then, the big-brained mainframe doing it all from command central was the model of high tech. Today the very idea of it sounds like a cold-war-era relic, engineers say. Decentralization and mobile computing technology have taken over just about everything, allowing airlines, warehouse operators and shippers like FedEx to learn with just a few clicks the whereabouts of an item in motion, a feature that was supposed to be a chief strength of the baggage system."
Look, you have to store the data somewhere. Just because your FedEx guy clicks his little wireless dealie when you sign for a package, doesn't mean that his little wireless dealie is the datastore for all info about the package.
Why is the 'big central mainframe' the cause of the problems here?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Living in Denver and flying in and out of DIA, I can say it's better that any of the other Big City airports I've used. (Dulles, Seatac, Atlanta, DFW, Las Vegas, etc.)
It was accomplished on a scale and timeframe that was hard to imagine before the project. As a Student in Civil Engineering, I got a behind the scenes tour in college.
As the automated baggage system a f*ckup? Oh yeah, most certainly. Did they recover well? I'd say so.
Course, DIA is a political animal, and in all things politics, you're guaranteed to piss off more than half your constituents. But it's a damn sight better than Stapleton was.
Funny thing is, I saw a newspaper article about Denver's new airport, how it was in the middle of nowhere, and had cost overruns, and how it was nothing but a boondoggle.
It was written about Stapleton in the lates 1930's. The switchover in 1985 meant that Stapleton was useful for more than _50_ years. I suspect in another 40 years, DIA won't be in the middle of nowhere anymore.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
From reading the article, it sounds like the problems had almost nothing to do with the software aspect of the system, whether on a mainframe or not, and everything to do with the physical design of the tracks.
The fact that bags fell off the tracks because the corners weren't banked has nothing to do with the control system. Same for using unstable pallets to hold the bags.
This whole article seems to be based on a flagrant redefinition of the term "bug" as we understand it. It wasn't software bugs that caused the problems, it was crap engineering.
Which begs the question why, when other airports (such as Heathrow) have miles of tracks that work just fine, couldn't Denver do the same?
You're exactly right. I really wish the NYT reporter would have done a better job figuring out why the baggage system didn't work. Instead we're left guessing, with vague anecdotes about carts tipping over and barcodes not being properly scanned -- all of which has nothing whatsoever with the computer in the back office. By the way, mainframes are at the heart of every major package shipper's operations, tracking every little bit of package-related data. Not so surprising: it's a job that must run reliably, without downtime. Mainframes do that well. And if the mainframe was to blame, why didn't United (or the airport or whomever) just drop in one of those wonderful Peecees to do the job? That would have fixed everything, right? Obviously no, that wasn't the problem.
What I wonder is, are there comparable systems elsewhere that actually work? When NBC Nightly News covered this story they had pictures of utterly mangled bags, and it made me think how hard it would be to make a system that could handle any size or shape of bag, thousands upon thousands per day, with miles of chains and thousands of bearings, and actually have it be reliable.
Mars rover for one.
I think you are only seeing the negative and assuming that is all that is out there. The problem with constant media is that we really do lose our sense of proportion. Yeah, one airport luggage system failed because of bad planning. You don't think anything like this ever happens in Europe? Or that there aren't success stories in the US? Think again.
You mention outsourcing that is another story that has been blown out of proportion by the media, including the self-promiting asshats..I mean "researchers" at Gartner. Yeah, some jobs have gone over to India, and they may not be coming back, but it's not nearly as big of thing as NeoIt, Gartner, or the Washington Tech Alliance(is that their name? Can't remember, the group in Washington State who is organizing against outsourcing) would have you believe.
The media only reports on what is new and interesting. Remember the huge SARS scare? Worldwide that killed about 800 people. That is about the number of people who die on America's highways PER WEEK, and yet whenever the Transportation Safety Board issues it's report on how 40,000 people died last year in car accidents, the media gives it a blurb and then turns it's attention to whatever the scare tactics of today are.
The US economy isn't nearly as bad as the naysayers claim it is, nor is it nearly as strong as the Bush apologists boast. The hardest thing to find in this sea of information is the truth.
Monstar L
From a RTFA between the lines it would appear that they started on this project late, hadn't factored in where they were going to put the necessary IT equipment, almost as if it were an after thought. Essentially their customers baggage was well well down the list of priorities.
And then they blame it on the computers.
Typical.
Some companies/public services really do give the distinct impression that they consider their customers/clients a major inconvenience as they attempt to make a profit/index linked pension.
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Ben Hocking
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I've had luggage take forever in JFK airport, and the fastest was in another country!
This may come as a surprise to you, but some of us out here in the rest of the world don't consider US technology to represent the absolute pinnacle of human achievement.
That's not to say that you don't lead in some areas, just not all of them. Judging by the horror stories one hears about US airports, I'm lead to think that aerial transportation is in the latter category.
If your comment title says 'Re: Foo', I'm not likely to read it.
I can feel your pain. I've seen perfectly good systems thrown away for no other reason than politics and focusing on the one feature that doesn't work well ignoring the 95% that performs exceptionally and delivers value. But I gotta say to this:
I'm sorry. That's like saying "Because the user didn't click in PRECISELY the right spot the program crashed" or "because the assembly tech didn't cut to the 1/4" tolerance required for this car, it shook itself apart". If, at the end of the day, you have humans at either end of the system, you need to design for them. How they do their work and how they will use it. If you get frustrated that they won't behave like a computer, then the problem is with you -- not the people.
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
The like had never been done before, raising both the price and the expectation of failure
Actually, that isn't true. There are at least three other automated baggage-handling systems (at San Francisco, Munich, and Frankfurt). I think the biggest problem was the #1 project killer: a delivery date was dictated before any analysis or design work was done. Not to mention the fact that the airport had actually begun construction before the system was even fully specified (forcing the design to fit the established plans, instead of allowing flexibility in the plans to accomodate the new system).
I heard a rumor that Siemens (who built the Frankfurt system) was invited to bid on the Denver system, and quickly declined after reading the RFP.
Just junk food for thought...
Our founding fathers removed the guys in charge. Be American. Vote incumbents out.
I agree, I'm not the guy that designed it, I'm just the guy that has to fix it when it screws up. But, it's a machine, it expects certian paramaters for it to work correctly, and the humans are the dynamic element who's job is to make it work. It's not like there are tolerances of 1/4", an inch, or even three that will screw it up... The thing is the carts are rectangular shape, and they will throw a rectangular bag into it carelessly, such that it goes in the short way, so long as the tag is pointing up so the scanners can see it, they don't give a shit.
These are people who received a certian amount of training and security clearances to do their job. It's not like I'm expecting some average Joe Blow out of the local mall to operate it perfectly. Not at all! If a computer user at a bank inputs the wrong stuf, the shit's going to hit the fan eventually, right? They ccertianly receive a certian amount of training and scrutiny. I don't see how this is much different.
Yes, those people are idiots.
It's like buying a house next to a railroad track and complaining about the trains. If the house you're buying is mysteriously cheaper than the same house in another area: Find out why! And if you buy it anyway: Live with it!
Well, OS/360 came about 5 years before UNIX and 10 years before VMS. The other major "everything is new" computer project of the day, Multics, never realy took of at all, died compleatly a decade ago, while there is a clear liniage from OS/360 to production systems of today.
OS/360 was a batch processing OS, and not the only OS available for System/360. OS/360 was the first OS to require "direct access storage devices" - hard drives, which gives you an idea of the state of the art at the time. JCL may be obtuse but it makes interaction with a computer infinitly easier then the previous system, which was no interaction at all.
More generally about the System/360: it is by far the most revolutionary computer system ever built. Any individual feature was not necessaraly amazing, any feature likely existing in isolation in competitors or research systems for years: but the 360 brought it all together and (this was unique) sold as a family of cross compatable computers and cross compatable peripherals.
This response is hardly worth the effort as you clearly have no idea what you are talking about.
I agree with you, and I hope the following example can contribute.
The inventor of the japanese subway tickets system had the same problem (regarding users not being precise enough, sometimes the tickets would go sideways, etc). People were sick tired of having the machines eat their tickets just because they weren't in the right position.
He was so pressured that he almost gave up, so to clear his mind, he took a walk in the park. Then, as he was on a wooden bridge over a small river, he saw a leaf floating on the river moving against a rock. The leaf was perpendicular to the river flow, but then it collided with a small rock, that made it turn parallel with the flow.
Based on this idea, he implemented a small device consisting of a round piece of metal that would rotate the tickets to the correct order, so they would pass the magnetic scan. Currently this magnetic ticket system is implemented in many countries, including the mexican subway which is over 25 years old now.
So, in the end, it all comes to this: A well-designed system will pass even the worst conditions. The Denver Airport Baggage design team certainly needed to work more, and think of the worst cases - i.e. quasi-spherical (i.e. bloated) luggage.