Kiwis' 3D software puts lost luggage in perspective

Marc Michel (left) and Scott Cornwall demonstrate BSC's baggage management system. Photo / Paul Estcourt

A New Zealand company is at the forefront of ending lost-baggage woes with its world-beating 3D software to manage airport baggage systems.

North Shore-based freight handling specialist BCS Group has spent more than two years and several million dollars creating the 3D operator control software, which it says has applications beyond its core freight-management capabilities.

Its Sym3 software - in use at Melbourne Airport and Courier Post's new South Auckland facility - not only creates a three-dimensional view of the conveyor belts, diverters and carousels, but gives operators a view of individual items moving through the system, be it bags, courier parcels, meat carcasses or a bottle of wine.

Marc Michel, BCS's general manager of international business and group marketing manager, said the product was years ahead of the traditional 2D systems.

He said the existing "off the shelf" software products, which had not changed for 15 to 20 years, showed only the status of a system - whether a conveyor is working or stopped, or a diverter device is open or closed.

"With our Sym3 operator package it can actually show every bag in the system at any time," said Michel.

Any bags at risk of not reaching a plane on time or caught up in a bag jam can be retrieved by baggage handlers.

Michel said the regular 2D systems would show only a jam in the system and had no way of identifying which bags were caught up.

The company's first Sym3 client, CourierPost, is now handling 600 per cent more parcels an hour through its new facility than the previous manual handling system.

The Sym3 system has evolved from 3D software BCS developed seven years ago to simulate the baggage-handling systems the company installs.

The software, branded "Virtual Airport", meant BCS could mock up a project from the design stage through to deployment in an airport.

Michel said the complex nature of airports - involving airlines, retailers, customs, MAF, groundstaff and airport owners - meant any mistakes could create eye-watering cost blow-outs.

In the case of international airports, the company might have only a four-hour early-morning window to install its systems before everything needed to be up and running for the day's first flights.

Michel said BCS had ambitions to become a dominant player in manufacturing and visualisation software and to "get a serious chunk" of a market valued at US$1 billion ($1.37 billion) a year.

The company, which is majority owned by key staff with ANZ Bank's private equity arm holding the balance, employs 270 staff across New Zealand and Australia with a turnover last financial year of $76 million.

BCS has created a separate business unit headed by Scott Cornwall to enable the software to be sold to companies operating in competition to BCS's project-based business.

MOVING UP

* BCS wants to become dominant in manufacturing and visualisation software and to "get a serious chunk" of a market valued at US$1 billion ($1.37 billion) a year.

* The company employs 270 staff across New Zealand and Australia with a turnover last financial year of $76 million.