The Future of Baggage Handling: Collaboration, Data, and Cybersecurity at the Forefront

Welcome to the baggage guys drinking, coffee. Yeah. Coffee. That's right. Ryan and Mike unpacking all things baggage handling. Let's get right to it. Hey, everybody. Welcome to IABSC's baggage guys drinking coffee. We're your your hosts. I'm Mike Kessler. That's Ryan Evers. And today's episode is being sponsored by Entroba. We'll be drinking the Entroba coffee, Entroba for all your BHS design needs. But first, today, we're gonna welcome to the bag room, Dan Vandeman from Brock Solutions. Welcome, Dan. Thanks, guys. Hey, Dan. Thanks for having me. Yeah. I appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, we've known each other what now? It's been a long time. Fifteen years? About fifteen. Yeah. Same for me. Sorry to hear that. It's all good. So tell us a little bit about what you do. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Brock Solutions, as I think everybody knows, software everything turnkey. We do, our own panels in our panel shop, all the commissioning, testing, emulation, environments, etcetera. And, of course, we also have a manufacturing, business unit. We do a lot of the same stuff in other industries. So we bring a lot of the real time control experience across various industries into the baggage channeling industry as well. So we're in, I think it's seventy five percent of the category x airports in the US, and, we're starting to branch out into other parts of the world like, Dublin and Australia. So yeah. It's exciting times. It's busy in the industry right now. So, yeah, you you call them emulations. We know them as fat, fat tests, factory acceptance tests. We do do fats. Yes. Yep. So it's a fun one to educate owners on when we say we gotta go do a FATS somewhere. Yeah. They have no clue what we're saying typically. Yeah. So and for Oktoberfest every other year. Yeah. That's another Yes. We are known for the Automation Summit, I believe. We're known for the Airport Automation Summit, also known as Brocktoberfest. Yes. Every second year on the evens. So we just had it here in twenty twenty four, and we'll do it again in twenty twenty six. Up in Kitchener. Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. Fast fact. Kitchener used to be named New Berlin before they renamed it Kitchener. Correct? Right, Ryan. Yes. And it it actually allegedly is the second largest Oktoberfest outside of Munich, Germany. They have good schnitzel. If you can get a seat at the downstairs table, there's a very good schnitzel to be had. Yeah. I recommend it. Beer garden before got that shit. Well, it's a it's a must for anybody in the industry to at least go once in a while. I mean, the automation summit, you know, the intention is to have customers coming to actually share their experiences with other customers. So it's not a Brock sales pitch. It's actually, you know, customers sharing experiences and lessons learned, etcetera, and and how different solutions have worked for different airports, different airlines, etcetera. So it's, yeah, it's always fun. We end the night then the day with with a fun night, but there is a legitimate reason for going. I think that lots of our customers and and friends and partners in the industry see a lot of value in, in attending that. Well, I think in in the, you know, the education that you get, like you said, you know, regarding the solutions. And and that's kinda what I wanna roll into first. You know, we all have challenges on the project. I know from construction side, you know, the logistics are typically challenged for us. You know, I'm sure for Ryan, the the design and, the It's the IRD. The demarcation. Yeah. The demarcation line for the interface requirements document is the biggest challenge that I run into coordinating where that line is between the the BHS OEM, the controls house as we would call it, and and the GCs, the turners of the world. What are the challenges that proxies typically on a on a project, like a challenge project? Well, when you talk about specs, I think, actually, there was a session, unfortunately, that I I missed for the IABSI IABSC summit. I apologize for missing that and some family things going on. They did talk about specs and, you know, some of the challenges that we have is is how quickly things move on the technology side. And everything, you know, all the controls companies are dealing with is new technologies, especially for IT. And, you know, it's changing every year. There's something new. You've gotta keep things up to date. So it is hard to keep, you know, specs up to date with with changing technologies. I think, you know, some of the other challenges one of the big ones for us is, we, you know, we do a lot of work for airports, for airlines. And depending on who wrote the spec, we might see where it actually conflicts. We'll find some conflicts with what we know the customer actually wants. So then we're a little bit in the middle trying to decide, you know, trying to navigate that between end customer and, you know, the whether it's an airline or an airport and whoever the, you know, project team is, the OEM or the consultant, etcetera. That can can be a bit of a challenge at times for sure. So do you do you find, you know, educating the owners ahead of time? Is that a good solution Absolutely. To Yeah. Make their decisions? Yeah. I mean, AECOM and and, you know, yourself with Turner and lots of other companies have, subject matter experts that can really help customers understand, you know, not just what a conveyor layout looks like and how it's gonna work and what it's gonna do for them, but also even, you know, knowing a bit about the controls and software side of it and helping coach them through, you know, what what could that you know, what am I trying to get out of the system today, and then what am I trying to get out of this in ten years from now, and and how is that system gonna age, and how are we gonna be able to keep it up to date? Because, again, you know, specs are it's a challenge to keep specs up to date. It's definitely a challenge to keep the system itself up to date. Right? So, you know, now with, ever changing IT landscape, cybersecurity is That yeah. This is what I wanted to talk about. Right? Was the one the one person at the airport you're always forced to to coordinate with who ultimately is not a baggage expert or has no knowledge of baggage is the IT folks. Yeah. They're typically super knowledgeable in their realm. For sure. And maybe they're overconfident in in their in their the ease of understanding a bag system, which is where I lean on the on the brocks of the world to to help us temper the expectations of the IT folks in the cybersecurity. I mean, we used to have stand alone baggage systems. It was its own network for a reason. Right? Mission critical, all those big words. And and now we're starting to ride on airport networks. We're starting to deal with air gapped firewalls. And, and like you said, the the landscape is changing so rapidly. How are you guys, how do you guys navigate that? Yeah. Good question. You you talk about standalone networks. There's hardly an airport that I can think of even even in other industries. Right? And I worked at a power plant many, many years ago, and it was, you know, oh, it's air gapped. We're never gonna have just because you're air gapped doesn't mean that it's safe. Right? You could have somebody plug a thumb drive in and all of a sudden, you know, you're infected or something like that. We've we've definitely seen in the last I have to I think it's six five or six years ago, there was a a large customer in this industry that had a a ransomware attack, and it and it, it was from a thumb drive as opposed to, like, logging into to something, remotely. But, I mean, to get data out of a system, which we all want the data to understand how the system's operating, and there's there's tons of data. Like, when we start we could go down the path of IoT and all that stuff and and, you know, more and more sensors and data. But if you're gonna create more data, you're gonna wanna consume more data. You're gonna want that outside of the system so you can really report on it and use analytics and things like that. We've got lots of customers that are getting our data, ingesting it into things like Power BI or Tableau or what have you, but you gotta be connected so now you've got this this marrying of of the we call it the IT and the OT, so, like, the operations technologies. You know, there there's a bit gray because you still have Windows servers and all that stuff. You got Windows workstations, which which are traditionally more IT, but you've got OT technologies running on it. So you've got a you've got an HMI that's running, you know, Siemens WinCC or FactoryTalk or Wonderware or Ignition. So that software package, the IT folks are not typically familiar with that. So when you start talking about trying to up keep that up to date and patch it, it's it's actually it's a little more complicated than just pushing out a patch for Microsoft Outlook. It doesn't really work like that. You know, without getting too much into specifics, like, you've got you've got different ports that things are communicating on that IT folks are just not used to seeing. And, we've even had incidents where you plug in an IT scanning tool that's automatically going through and categorizing. It's cataloging everything that's on your network, and it sees, you know, an HMI server, doesn't know what it is, shuts it down. Right? Well, that's not a good thing in a baggage handling system. So, I don't know if I answered your question, Ryan. But, I'd like to go back to the data for a minute because data seems, you know, coming from the O and M background and and wanting to use that data, to help better maintain the system, a lot of times, we run into airlines, especially in the common use system, and especially in international, who the data actually belongs to. Mhmm. Right? And the data sharing between airlines and airport and Yeah. And who owns what. Yeah. That's always a question, and and I know that, you know, some of that stuff gets firewalled and and, you know, it's, you know, without, you know, the right password or whatever to access it, you're not gonna be able to. Yeah. So so when you're starting a project like that, you know, how is that how is that determined? Is that a direction from the airport? Is that how do you guys do that? You know, this might be controversial, but I would say it's it's not necessarily determined at the start of a project. And quite often, those type of questions come up after we've gone live. Mhmm. And that's not the best time to be having that discussion. So it's it's actually something that probably should be talked about upfront during design phase. Who owns like, who maintains the data? Who owns the data? Who has access to the data? Are there pipes out to other systems? You know, if we're doing a system at a particular terminal, at a particular airport, you know, what does the airport get? Because they have needs. What is the airline or airlines for that terminal? What do they get? How do they get it? I don't know that I have a easy answer for that, but I do think the discussion should should start much sooner than it currently does. Well, and and, I mean, that kinda ties into the ORAD too. Right? When do you start the ORAD? I've always maintained that even though the ORAD occurs at the end, it should start in the beginning. I mean, just for things like that for for data, but but also for how that data is gonna be presented at the end. You know what I mean? You know, talk about things like as built drawings. Right? You know, if you go into a lot of the airports, they got, you know, rooms full of three ring binders for for as built drawings and nobody can access them. So, you know, one of that one of those upfront questions needs to be what what media do you want this in? Mhmm. You know, do you wanna load it into a Maximo program for your for your o and m? Do you want, you know, you want thumb drives? How do you how do you want that? And I think I think to that end, if you're talking about the end users in in ORAD, that's probably where that discussion should start. Well, actually, I would say, you know, where the discussion could start, I I think it should start specification. Spec specification time. The next checkpoint for us typically, right, is is at the you mentioned the factory acceptance test. Mhmm. That's the perfect time. Ideally, you have all the key stakeholders in the same room. You've got a essentially a running system. You know, the software, the controls think that that the HMI, the reports, everything thinks that the baggage handling system is there, and it's running, and you're pulling up reports, and you can pull up Power BI dashboards, and you can really actually look at what this stuff looks like before anything's ever installed on-site, that that to me should be, like, the last checkpoint, then you're getting into the ORAT discussion and and you've already figured it all out. I mean, one of the reasons in the spec development, I've always said, data for like, data collection just for the sake of data collection doesn't do anybody any benefit, but I still required in many instances. And when the client comes to me and says, what am I gonna do with this data? I say, we don't have a use for it today. Yeah. But tomorrow, we might, so let's just collect it now. That's I don't disagree with that, and we hear that a lot in the industry. The only thing I would say is, you know, speaking, I think, for all the controls companies in the industry, when you start adding more data points, it's actually more things that we have to test and validate. Right? Which means it's more time. So your commissioning schedule needs to be longer? It could be. Yeah. I mean, if you think about adding, say, a vibration sensor on everything, every single belt on a fifteen hundred drive system. It's fifteen hundred more IO points. Well and and we have to validate that in the office while we're doing all of our internal testing, then we validate it during the FAT, and then we go to site and we actually validate it on the system. It's not just one time you test that stuff. You're gonna test it multiple times over, and then, you know, it's fifteen hundred times. So I I agree. I hear a lot of IT departments that wanna get as much data as they can because they don't know down the line what they may or may not need. But there's a cost to that. Whether it's the thing we don't know. Like, half the reason we limit the specs is there's no there's no insight into how much is it gonna cost if I ask for this and what does it do to our budget. Mhmm. So it gets cut, which is why it never gets added into most of these types of systems because, gosh forbid, my ROM estimate budget is blown because I asked for shaft run out sensors Right. Right? Or some some other I mean field monitoring. Yeah. And it and it's always cheaper and easier to do it while you're building the system than, you know, five years from now, and it's like, well, we wanna go add this. It's it's nowhere near as easy to do it at that point. So I do agree with that. I guess just bring all that in if you had your your druthers, if you had your way that you were gonna run a project Mhmm. You know, what what would you wanna see? What would you wanna what would you want owners to have ready for decisions? What would you wanna have, in the spec? What you know? Perfect. Yeah. Another good question. I mean, we we do like being involved in projects as early as possible. And when I say, you know, traditionally in baggage channeling systems, for controls many years ago when I first started twenty twenty three years ago, we wouldn't get involved in a project until there's a hundred percent design. It's gone out to all the OEMs. The OEMs have kinda done their thing or even a GC. Right? A GC then an OEM, then it gets to us. And, typically, by that time, there's not there's not really much we can do to influence, you know, the layout for sure, different aspects. There might be little things that we could change, but there's there's been many times over the years where we went in to to do a system, even a greenfield system, and we found lots of things that didn't it didn't work quite the way we would like it to, and we'd have to change it later. So I think probably the top of the list would really be getting involved in projects upfront early, you know, not just from a layout perspective, but also from, like, the I mentioned the IT perspective. Right? Even controls architecture nowadays, you know, there's lots of new technologies, all the different drive manufacturers, you know, the big industry leaders, Rockwell, Siemens, etcetera, all have new technologies coming out. And typically, the controls company is the most familiar with that. We can provide kinda real time feedback around designs, you know, because you might be designing a system that's gonna go into operation five years from now. So you you wanna you wanna have the latest and greatest information. And that way, when you when you actually turn the system on, you've got the newest possible system that you can have. You know? The last thing you want is to put something in that's actually five years old or or older. Mhmm. You think the specifications are not prescriptive enough or performance enough and are over specifying, like, we want this type of computer at these monitors. And then by the time you go to install it, you say this isn't powerful enough for what we needed to do as a simple example. Are you talking design assist? I'd say more design assist. Yeah. But that's worked very well for us. It's so hard on a traditional delivery method to get a design assist because it oftentimes precludes you from bidding. So that's a it's a for from my standpoint, it's really hard for me to engage unless it's an alternative delivery format to even get you a seat at the table if I wanted. Education too. And the the the one part that I thought you're gonna say you're you wanna be engaged in was schedule. Because what I've seen with Yeah. With the controls is, you know, the mechanical, you know, they go long, you know, and then the electricians come in behind them and they say, well, my beard means you don't know what long is. And they go really long. And then, and then, you know and and if the whole thing doesn't shift Yeah. Then, you know, we're coming to Brock, and we're we're saying, okay. You got a Do you do it in two weeks instead of a month? You got a you got a day. We've we actually have a very specific example of that Yeah. Right now. I won't mention where. But, yeah. You know, that that's always been the case though, to be honest. Like, for twenty twenty three years Yeah. Is very common when we're doing projects. So, you know, obviously, we want as much time as we can to to fully test out the system. Yep. You know, like, it doesn't matter if it's Brock or somebody else. You're gonna be doing device level checks. You're gonna be doing then rolling in the system level checks. You need to check all of your, you know, your HMI, your reports, your if you've got analytics. So I'll tell you what the problem with that is. Okay? The problem is that with that is that people cannot touch and feel it. Mhmm. Okay? They can they can see when the mechanical is going in. They can see the pipe being roughed in and and wires being pulled. Yeah. They can't see what you're doing. So they just assume that, well, it's not a lot that they're doing. They're just plugging their computers in and that to your point, that's not the case. And that's, you know, we've changed our, our approach in baggage shops now to where, you know, we are pool planning out the bat the entire baggage schedule and then we're putting it in the construction schedule. So if anything moves, if if the baggage mechanical moves, baggage electrical moves, or even if construction structural moves, it's gonna cause a change. Mhmm. Your time frame doesn't move at the end because we've seen that as, you know, to your point, there are plenty of examples of it. Last twenty three years, we can't allow that to happen. And, you know, as a construction manager, we're managing the project. We have to make sure it doesn't happen for you. You gotta you gotta be a champion. But that's waterfall scheduling. Right? Which, I mean, I I don't wanna say it's the easiest way to execute a project because if one thing changes, every every downstream activity just day for day. Right? Mhmm. Well, not exactly. I mean, for for hours. Subsystem it. Subsystem by subsystem is kinda how I like to look at the the controls work so that if I can at least give them an opportunity to work on this subsystem because these subsystems are falling on. Something to keep the team mobilized because nothing's worse on a baggage project. Sometimes sometimes that doesn't. So that to your point, having the controls company, software company weigh in on the schedule because, sometimes subsystem by subsystem, like, we've seen, you know, oh, can you just commission this one line? Right. Right? Right. Right. Doesn't work like that. Can you commission this part? Like, there's a lot of factors that go into, you know, is the network for that entire, you know, we'll say break it up by PLC. Is it are all the networks installed? Are all the e stops installed? Is everything there that we can actually run it as though it's done? Because multiple subsystems are sharing hardware. Could be interfaces are missing. So then you gotta kinda kinda jump through hoops. And I think, you know, as as execution teams on a project, you know, we always find ways to work through those those challenges. You're you're right, though. Like, from a, like, from a GC perspective, you guys always try to find a way to to keep that amount of time. I'm just saying that since controls companies are typically the last one out of the gate, Right? If there's gonna be a push and they're try to squeeze that, it's gonna be on us for sure. Well, and that you know, and that and that's why it's not a one time engagement. Right? I mean, yeah, you're gonna be involved in the poll planning. We'll break it down. We can even break it down by subsystem. But, you know, to your point when things do shift, it's a reevaluation. Alright? And that happens throughout the project constantly. So you've got to reevaluate every time you see a shift in that schedule and figure out, you know, not just how you're gonna get over that one part, but how everything is gonna flow as, you know, as a result of that. And that will give you your true shift, you know, how far out to the right you're gonna go, or if you can't pull it in to the left. So it's it's more than one engagement. Because, alright. Let me throw a curveball at you. Not from you, Ryan. Really? Yeah. I guarantee that. I gotta give you one. It'll it'll be easier. But I will start with soft soft curveball. Alright. Is it easier for you to have the electrical installation team as a sub to you Mhmm. So that you can control the installations that he's doing? Or is it, I guess, irrelevant or you agnostic as to that? Agnostic is probably a good way to put it. I mean, when when we're working with, all all the OEMs, you know, they have great electrical install teams all throughout the country, you know, professionals that know what they're doing. Typically, our team is is we'll we'll have somebody that's kind of embedded in their electrical install team that's helping kinda, you know, if they have questions, etcetera. We will subcontract the electrical, but but we don't have to. It's it's not a prerequisite. And, I mean, you do get into potential markup on like, if we're marking up an electrical installer and passing that on, that's not the most efficient either. It depends on what state too because in some states like California, they they are not considered a subcontractor or or any kind of contractor, so they're not able to bring anybody on. You know? That is that is contractor. True. Tax rate. So we have to be certified with the state for that. Yeah. No. And I'm agnostic, but I really I really like having Brock's PM make sure that all of the wires are properly labeled, and they're the ones who create those detailed electrical drawings. They know what those electrical drawings are for. So that I don't know, like, that markup thing that we talk about. Mhmm. That it maybe it's cheap insurance in my mind. Right? I I execute them both ways. But, you know, belt and suspenders. We we still we still do everything that we would normally do on a project, irrespective of whether the electrical installer is under us or not. Right? So the, you know, the level of quality and the care and all that stuff is is still there. It really shouldn't matter if they're under us or not. It's typically not our our approach Okay. To subcontract, but, but we have on occasion. There's a lot of interfaces that go on between the the the mechanical installer from a like, for the OEM from a mechanical and an electrical perspective, our approach has always been that there's there's so much, you know, interconnection between how that goes in, you know, installation and interferences, etcetera. J box accessibility. All of it. Yeah. Phenomenal tag location. So, yeah, you you would think that that the controls should dictate that, but but not necessarily. It's we think that it's important that the OEM has, has influence over the electrical installer because it's their conveyor that's going in. Okay. Yeah. Typically typically, when I purchase baggage handling OEMs, I always have a, always have a liaison if they're gonna have Brock on onboard either under them or Brock's direct to us. I always make sure that they have a a controls liaison. So, you know, again, communication being the biggest thing on on projects. And, you know, so I I still have them bringing their own controls person to make sure that they've got rock lined out in the field and that communication's happening because a lot of times these guys will come up and tell the the site manager something, and he's you know, it's it's all Greek to the to the site manager. So so having a a controls guy there as well is just another, I think, piece of insurance to make sure that you guys get your say in how things are gonna flow out. What you call us last night? What did Keyboard jockeys. Is that what you called? That wasn't me. That wasn't you? No. Oh, that wasn't you either. That wasn't you either. No, sir. Centralized or distributed. That's a question? Yeah. There's there's a curve ball. That's I mean, that's Yeah. That's a good question. Yeah. So there's trade offs to both. I'm not gonna say that there's a a perfect answer to that, because there's different use cases. That's like saying ICS versus standard conveyor. There's there's different use cases on on, you know, every install. We still do centralized installs if if that's what makes sense for the customer. I prefer it for inbound systems with CompactLogix PLC. Right? The the biggest the biggest one, I think, many years ago, I remember lots of discussions with, like, Galoid and and some others around that in the industry. You know, centralized was supposed to save money on electrical install or sorry. Distributed was supposed to save money on electrical install. That's wiring. The the idea being, you know, we're just plug and play and, you know, less electrical install. We've seen some instances where you could call it the right or the wrong distributed architecture actually makes the price more. So it it really it really does depend, I think, on you you know, you've seen one airport, you've seen one airport, like, there there could be it it could have a ton of different factors, even the market that you're in and and the labor market. Right? Oh, specific regions. Doing an install in Omaha versus doing an install in New York or San Francisco or LA, there's a big difference there. Right? So Well, you wanna give a shout out to anybody on, on a podcast? Yeah. Should I give a shout out to Eric Bird for making making me, stand in for him? No. I wanna give a shout out to you guys. I appreciate it. No worries. I think it's a fun it's a fun concept. It's not a small amount of work to put these together. So, you know, I appreciate you guys, doing it. And is this the first? This is the first. This is the first. Yeah. Well, I'm honored to be here for the first. Thank you. Thank you. But overall. Yeah. Yeah. I look forward to it. The this this set, this studio is amazing. Yeah. And, I think it'll only be better. Best for Brock. Always. Well, thanks. Again, man. Thanks for your time. Appreciate you coming. Dan. Appreciate it. Brian? Yeah. Thank you very much. Yep. That's it for this episode. Please come back and see us again in the bedroom.