Decision support system for exception management in RFID enabled airline baggage handling process

This paper attempts to investigate methods through which RFID-enabled technologies may be used to streamline and improve airline baggage handling processes. The current process for airline baggage handling relies heavily on the use of barcodes and is highly unreliable. Even though the value of RFID-enabled technologies, in handling passenger bags, is generally accepted in the industry, the adoption of these technologies is hindered by concerns relating to inadequate return on investment on them. In this paper, we attempt to address this issue by highlighting scenarios in the baggage handling process where RFID-enabled technologies may be uniquely positioned to create value. In particular, with the help of fault trees we identify exceptions that commonly arise in the baggage handling process and identify RFID-enabled solutions that may be implemented to manage these exceptions. We also discuss the design of a decision support system that can be implemented to automatically handle baggage handling exceptions using RFID tag information. © 2006 IEEE.