Q-Rally winners put FOH milestone into practise

Left to right: Juan Pablo Giraldo, Kuehne+Nagel; Lothar Moehle, Cargo iQ; Ensar Akdag, Turkish Cargo; Simon Sharpe, Swissport

Ensar Akdağ, Digital Cargo Supervisor, Turkish Airlines – Turkish Cargo, explains how the carrier collaborated with partners Swissport and Kuehne+Nagel to overcome acceptance issues at Nairobi Airport – and win the Cargo iQ Q-Rally trophy.

In order to find a solution to an issue regarding acceptance processes in Nairobi airport, the local teams of Turkish Airlines, our ground handling agent (GHA) Swissport, and Kuehne+Nagel came together and held a meeting.

For various reasons such as operational delays, partial acceptance of the shipments, and so on, partial RCS (Received Cargo from Shipper) messages were being sent by the ground handling agent and this was causing an irregularity, blocking the freight waybill message (FWB) sent by our customer Kuehne+Nagel. We reviewed the end-to-end process with local teams and tried to find a solution to this from the Cargo iQ perspective.

After the meeting, we agreed on a solution to use the Freight On Hand (FOH) milestone. The proposal provided both a solution to the issue and enabled the satisfaction of important Cargo iQ KPIs (Latest Acceptance Time, Freight On Hand, Ready for Carriage). It was also important for us to implement this solution with FOH milestone, which is generally not used as much as other Cargo iQ milestones, such as RCS.

Our proposal was that at the beginning of the acceptance process, the GHA is advised to send the FSU-FOH (Freight Status Update – Freight On Hand) message for all pieces to Turkish Cargo, who would then send it to Kuehne+Nagel’s system. Kuehne+Nagel would then know the exact number of pieces and weight information of the shipment.

After the reception of FOH by Kuehne+Nagel, they are advised to trigger the FWB message with correct pieces and weight. Turkish Cargo would also forward Kuehne+Nagel’s FWB message to Swissport. Finally, Swissport would be able to send the RCS with the total number of pieces, rather than as a partial RCS message.

This solution, which we planned and implemented, enabled the Cargo iQ KPI performance of the various stakeholders to be increased. In addition, by sharing this solution with other project stakeholders during the Q-Rally session, it set an example for similar problems that they are likely to encounter. Our study, which we presented at the Q-Rally session, was selected by Cargo iQ members as winner among other projects, each of which are as valuable as our study. In my opinion, the most important key point for us and for other members is the collaboration that we are able to achieve across the industry.

Thanks to this group work, we as the Cargo iQ community are able to find solutions to the issues that we face and improve processes, such as defining milestones, operational processes of the milestones, and the relationships between each milestone in the MOP. In doing so, we are able to speak the same language among the membership, which enables us to progress further and achieve quality improvements as above. In Turkish Cargo, we believe the importance of being a Cargo iQ member is this ability to speak the same language, having a quality-centric approach and the opportunity for collaboration among members.

Story edited by meantime.global