Munich International Airport selects AeroScouts GPS and Wi-Fi Asset Tracking

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AeroScout, a leading provider of Unified Asset Visibility for improving operational efficiency, has announced that Munich International Airport has chosen AeroScout for Wi-Fi Asset Tracking and Management.

Following a rigorous selection process, the airport is currently deploying the AeroScout GPS and Wi-Fi offering to accurately and efficiently track thousands of cargo and passenger baggage dollies as they move about the airports large outdoor ramp, apron and gate areas. This will improve operations, increase labour productivity and facilitate compliance with maintenance regulations.

Munich Airport has always strived to be a leader in operational efficiency among major airports, and were always searching for ways to improve especially as we continue to experience increasing traffic volumes, said Marc Lindike, Vice President of IT Consulting at Munich International Airport. As we look to maximize the utilization of cargo and baggage dollies, AeroScout perfectly addresses our needs. It leverages our existing wireless network, is highly scalable and is able to provide asset tracking and management outdoors across our vast and complex ramp area all necessary qualities if were to achieve our operations goals.

Munich Airport is Europes seventh busiest airport and is ranked 27th globally. In the first half of 2009, it accommodated more than 15 million passengers and more than 100,000 metric tons of airfreight. Munich Airport was rated the best airport in Europe in 2008 for the fourth year in a row, according to an annual survey of more than eight million air travellers conducted by Skytrax, an independent, London-based aviation market research firm.

AeroScout T6 GPS Wi-Fi Tags are being mounted on the airports cargo dollies, used by cargo companies to pick up and drop off packages, and passenger baggage dollies, used for transporting baggage between terminals and airplanes. The battery-powered tags use GPS to determine location in any outdoor environment, and then standard Wi-Fi to transport asset location and other valuable information to the network.

The availability of a broad set of APIs from AeroScout enabled a very efficient integration to Munich Airports Airport Process Management (APM) software suite, continued Lindike. This allows airport staff to instantly locate dollies on the airport grounds directly from the APM suite.

AeroScout leverages Munich Airports existing Cisco Unified Wireless Network, which provides Wi-Fi coverage for the terminals, aprons, gates, hangers and runway edges. Location information, transmitted over the Wi-Fi network, will be presented to airport staff from any computer with access to the network. In addition, on-demand and scheduled inventory reports are generated automatically to improve maintenance procedures and ongoing asset management.

Knowing where dollies are at all times will help Munich Airport prevent operations delays or interruptions due to missing or lost items, and eliminate lengthy searches for dollies that are due for their annual maintenance inspections a regulatory requirement. In addition, the airport will also be able to improve utilization of the dollies and charge cargo companies more accurately based on the location and usage of dollies.

Airports are among the most demanding and logistically complex operations, said Gabi Daniely, Vice President of Marketing and Product Strategy at AeroScout. Our GPS Wi-Fi offerings were designed with such environments in mind and demonstrate the advantages that AeroScouts Unified Asset Visibility solution delivers by combining GPS and other data sources and technologies into one Wi-Fi-based system.

Munich International Airport will deliver a presentation on its AeroScout Asset Tracking and Management at the RFID Journal Live! Europe conference today in Frankfurt, Germany.

About AeroScout
AeroScout is the market leader in Unified Asset Visibility solutions. Customers improve operational efficiency using AeroScout products that leverage standard Wi-Fi networks to track and manage the location, condition and status of mobile assets and people. AeroScouts global customer base consists of leading hospital, manufacturing and logistics organizations, including many of the Fortune 500. The company invented the first Wi-Fi-based Active RFID tag, and today is widely recognized as leading the market in number of deployments and tags shipped. Headquartered in Redwood City, California, AeroScout has offices in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Australia and Latin America.

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