The scales are relentless: the suitcase weighs 20.5 kilograms instead of the permitted 20, but the friendly lady at the check-in counter turns a blind eye and the next moment the luggage is swallowed up by a conveyor belt. Many passengers can only guess what happens between check-in and successful baggage reclaim. Thousands of suitcases are transported at lightning speed along the airport conveyor belts, sorted and taken to the right aircraft.

Anton Pajonk knows exactly how this works. The engineer founded Seap Automation in 1992, a company that specializes in industrial companies, particularly airports and the automotive industry - "anywhere that something is being transported or conveyed," says the founder. Numerous major projects for customers such as Frankfurt am Main Airport, Daimler, Zurich Airport, Opel, Miele, BMW and the Smart plant in Hambach are on his list of references. His current order is the largest to date: baggage logistics in the new Terminal 3 at Frankfurt am Main Airport. Conveyor belts move the baggage through the belly of the terminal at speeds of up to 2.5 meters per second. The project is right on schedule, thanks in part to good project management and good product availability from partners such as Lapp.

Large automation companies usually supply the cables for the power supply and data networking at the same time. Not so in Terminal 3 and also not in other projects in which Seap Automation is involved: Seap has been ordering the majority of its cables from Lapp for 30 years, i.e. since the company was founded: "The cooperation with the connection specialist on the Terminal 3 project couldn't be better," praises Julia Pajonk, member of the management board and authorized signatory of Seap Automation.

Tight schedule as a challenge

Lapp delivers many kilometers of cable to the construction site on time according to a tight schedule. There is a dense crowd of dozens of suppliers, which is why the supervisor only allows trucks onto the site according to a fixed schedule. If a driver misses his time slot, he has to go back to the supplier and try again a few days later - which delays the work. It is also not possible to temporarily store building materials on the site. The NYCWY power feed cables in particular have to be delivered just in time.

So far, Seap Automation has ordered around 85 kilometers of cable from different product families, each in various versions, for example with or without shielding or as a particularly flexible version. A large proportion is made up of Ölflex servo and control cables. There are also Unitronic data and Etherline network cables. Seap Automation is also increasingly ordering pre-assembled patch cables and sensor-actuator cables, with a total of 2,100 units ordered to date. "But this is just the beginning," says Marc Ehinger Account Manager at Lapp, who looks after the customer Seap Automation, "in the end there will be several hundred kilometers of cable."