Client Background

Client: A leading airport

Industry: Air transport

Area of operations: North America

Customers: Connects over 50 million passengers

Challenge

The client was struggling to enhance passenger experience at the boarding and transit gates. Lack of real time visibility into shuttle movement impacted the airport’s ability to optimize ground operations, resulting in longer wait times at the gates. It was a challenge to keep terminal facilities clean given the irregular maintenance schedule and lack of real time view of facilities.

At the same time, operational maintenance of equipment was not easy as terminal assets were not traceable. This resulted in excess equipment leases and purchases, putting equipment at risk of loss, theft or non-utilization. In addition, manual loading of bags on conveyor belts delayed the un-loading process, increasing passenger wait time.

Solution

Wipro implemented an Automated Vehicle Identification and Tracking solution on the Wipro Smart i-Connect™ platform for the airport. This enabled real time location tracking of vehicles with geo mapping, geo fencing, route optimization, and integration with other airport applications – Airport/Airline Customer Relationship Management systems, Google Maps, etc.

Wipro Smart i-Connect™ is a ready-to-deploy Internet-of-Things (IoT) based enterprise use case solution with open standard architecture which supports multiple protocols and helps realize advanced analytics.

Solution highlights:

• IoT to track and monitor assets and send alerts with automated display of facilities availability to passengers
• Installation and configuration of Wi-Fi tags on the assets or equipment, and Wi-Fi triangulation based real-time tracking of large assets in the airport terminal
• Proposed baggage-handling solution with installation of GPS devices on the tugs for real-time tracking, GIS map creation and Geofencing near baggage belt area, automatic assigning of tugs to the baggage handler based on FIFO principle 

Business Impact

Wipro Smart i-Connect™ platform allowed the airport to enhance customer experience while reducing cost of operations.

Impact highlights:

• 45% improvement in customer experience in waiting areas due to real-time visibility of shuttles and 15% reduction in passenger wait time in baggage area
• 12% improvement in asset utilization and 8% improvement in utilization of vehicles
• Enhanced AQI due to optimized ground operations
• 4% increase in merchandise revenue due to passengers spending 30% more time in the merchandise area of the airport
• 25% reduction in fuel costs and 30% improvement in resource scheduling and planning
• 15% increase in utilization of workforce

"Passenger experience is integral to the success of an airport besides other operational parameters. Our solution helped in boosting passenger experience significantly. Wipro Smart i-Connect™ provides the opportunity to scale IoT requirements of an airport on the same platform."

Ashish Khare, General Manager & Global Practice Head – Smart i-connect™, Cloud and Infrastructure Services, Wipro Limited.