Planning, control & evaluation - A Cargo iQ Webinar

Cargo iQ’s mission to support a quality-driven air cargo industry has never been more relevant, and this month we hosted a webinar as part of the IATA October Events, discussing the opportunities and challenges of reaching that goal, as well as our progress to date.

We invited members drawn from our airline, forwarder, and handling community, as well as our Board to present their experience of Cargo iQ and answer questions from some of the many delegates and industry guests who joined us.

The Chair of our membership board, Henrik Ambak – SVP Cargo Operations Worldwide for Emirates SkyCargo – opened the session with a call to arms for support of our organization’s cause.

"In these COVID times, when some of us are already involved in early vaccine logistics, we are again reminded how important quality is in our industry,” he said.

Cargo iQ’s Executive Director Ariaen Zimmerman gave an introduction to the Cargo iQ vision to improve the air cargo customer experience by planning, delivering, and learning together.

“We want to make sure that there are clear service commitments from all of our members from the ground handlers, to carriers, to forwarders and to the customers and the other way around as agreed,” he said.

John Dowds, Vice President Service Delivery - EMEA, Worldwide Flight Services (WFS) said WFS was committed to Cargo iQ from senior management down.

He explained that the WFS Cargo Quality Centre (CQC) had been measuring its operations against Cargo iQ’s Master Operating Plan (MOP) and that WFS global operations had been adapted to align with Cargo iQ standards.

“Cargo iQ is incorporated into our training programs,” he said.

WFS recognized Cargo iQ as a way to standardize their presence towards customers after a period of growth through acquisition and address some of the challenges faced by handlers including the visibility of offset times, the alignment between offset times and SLAs and operational reality, he said.

“Where we do have visibility in offset times, they aren’t totally aligned to operational reality sometimes and that causes difficulties,” he said.

“We need better visibility; we need to work on those differences and to ensure that it matches the operational reality.”

Frosti Lau, General Manager Cargo Service Delivery, Cathay Pacific Airways explained that a carrier’s pain points also included a lack of transparency, as well as limited resources and unforeseen situations such as COVID.

“Where Cargo iQ can help us as a carrier and with the rest of the community is actually getting back to basics,” he said.

“Implementing Cargo iQ allows members, including carriers, handlers, and freight forwarders to be compliant and control shipments under the route map according to SLA which is very important.”

He said he had seen a lot of progress with improved transparency and a focus on quality with projects such as Care Mapping.

The Service Parameters Project, which is discussed in more detail in this newsletter, was highlighted by Hans Helmkamp, Lead Consultant CIT at Hellmann Worldwide Logistics as an opportunity for members to improve on planning and control of their shipments in line with their time definite promise to customers.

“The project is really giving us the chance to align our forwarder products and services, with those of our airlines so that we can reliably offer tailor-made solutions to our customers,” he said.

“The new Service Parameters means planning is more precise and reliable for door to door and it gives the airline the option to optimize their capacity utilization.”

The speakers were joined for a Q and A session by Cargo iQ’s Vice Chair Kerstin Strauss, VP Air Logistics Operations Global Air Logistics at Kuehne + Nagel.

According to Zimmerman, the changes Cargo iQ is implementing are important to the industry but potentially come at a cost when members need to overhaul their systems to align.

“It’s true, but we have been on this journey for quite a long time and I think that a lot of the forwarding members in this group are very committed and have really contributed to create the standards that we have agreed to and have been part of that discussion,” said Strauss.

“A lot of us along that journey have already been engraining the MOP milestones and parameters into our operational systems.

“I think this is also the case for other members like carriers that have built their quality management systems on the operational planning around Cargo iQ.

“We have to make sure that every party involved in the movement of a shipment plays their role and takes on the responsibility of providing real-time information and visibility.”

To watch a recording of the full webinar, click here