At a Glance During both turbulent and smooth times, successful airline
companies continuously invest in safety, security and customer service
enhancements. Accenture Technology Labs devises first class solutions that
encompass every facet of the airline industry.
Tracking Passengers from Check-in to
Departure
Tagging and Tracking
Baggage
Accelerating Customer Knowledge
Gathering Posted: February, 2002
Troubleshooting Mechanical Difficulties Before
Troubles Begin Accenture Technology Labs is exploring miniscule technology
with massive safety potential for aircraft. "Smart Dust" will pack a sensor,
power supply, analog circuitry, radio communication capability, and a
programmable microprocessor into a package the size of a pinpoint. These
sensors could be embedded into objects like a turbine blade on an aircraft and
be able to transmit information to other sensors. To aggregate the data
received by the sensors, the Labs developed
Sensor Aggregation
Models, which could enable airlines to easily detect or investigate
changes in the blade and other inaccessible objects—in flight—as soon as they
occur and take the appropriate actions.
Tracking Passengers from
Check-in to Departure
The ability to track passengers
between check-in and boarding could contribute to added security, help minimize
delays, and optimize customer service. The Labs'
Context-Based
Services prototype is designed to locate people or objects indoors in
real time. A type of GPS (Global Positioning System) for inside buildings,
Context-Based Services relies on wireless LAN infrastructures to transmit
information like boarding announcements, delays or pages to passengers' PDAs
(Personal Digital Assistants) or mobile phones depending on their location
within the airport.
Tagging and Tracking
Baggage
Imagine the advantages of "intelligent" luggage.
Accenture Technology Labs'
Physical Media
Tracking prototype enables objects such as baggage to continuously
report their locations wherever they are. Bags would be tagged with inexpensive
radio frequency identification (RFID) tags and scanned via a tunnel reader. The
reader would immediately integrate the RFID information into a central database
application which would determine where the luggage should be directed. The
system can monitor if the luggage is removed from a belt clandestinely or if
it's moved to the wrong location. RFID tags continuously gather detailed
product information and allow the system to track the movement of a bag from
drop-off to baggage claim.
Accelerating Customer
Knowledge Gathering
Sentiment
Monitoring Services can help companies tap into customer attitudes
towards traveling, in-flight services, advertising, pricing and other issues
affecting business. The prototype searches airline, travel-related sites or
newsgroups on the Internet for opinions, interprets the sentiment of the text
towards a specified product or service, and provides the user with an analysis
of the results. For a broader-based search, the Labs' Knowledge Discovery Tool
aids companies in discovering all airline-relevant data repositories and links
they never knew existed, and displays knowledge as if stored in a single,
holistic database. The tool then shifts into high gear identifying and
introducing parties with similar travel research interests, linking them into
chat rooms to share findings.
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