Cargo Industry Research Articles

Performance analysis of a blockchain-based messaging system implementation for air cargo supply chains

ABSTRACT The air cargo supply chain’s goal is to achieve fast shipment movement through multistage coordination among multiple air cargo stakeholders. The lack of transparency in the end-to-end supply chain and complex digital connectivity is what limits the traditional peer-to-peer communication flow in the fragmented air cargo industry. Blockchain technology can enhance communication transparency by streamlining multistage message flows via smart contracts and by acting as an intermediary to simplify digital connections among air cargo stakeholders. Despite the benefits of applying blockchain for air cargo messaging, as blockchain is an emerging technology, technical concerns in the areas of performance, privacy, and interoperability can hinder the practical adoption of the blockchain system. To address practical implementation concerns, a blockchain-based messaging system using the Algorand public blockchain is developed in our work to demonstrate the practicality of blockchain. Transaction data privacy can be protected by the encryption key exchange algorithm, which supports forward secrecy. Our experimental results provide practical performance insights into the Algorand blockchain for streamlined messaging from various aspects related to transaction submission, confirmation, and retrieval. Our results show that by leveraging the Algorand blockchain, our proposed system can offer scalable, efficient, reliable, and cost-effective communication channels for air cargo messaging.

PROBLEMS, CHALLENGES, AND POTENTIALS OF THE GREEK AIR CARGO INDUSTRY

Air cargo significantly contributes to trade, bridging the gap between production and consumption in a timely and reliable manner. The specific industry is a complex system, participating many players and requiring many documents and actions. Greece’s economic growth is highly dependent on the exportation and import of goods. The current study intends to analyse the Greek air cargo industry, implementing a more holistic approach, identifying the main problems and challenges, and making useful recommendations. In-depth focus group discussion with the participation of twelve (12) experts (n=12) and observation applied to collect the required information. The main findings present the high level of bureaucracy, the lack of cooperation between the partners and the use of technology that caused significant problems in the industry’s performance, while some effective interventions were proposed. The study provides useful insights to the related practitioners, policy-makers and academicians.

The Mandate of Project Management Offices Beyond Organizational Boundaries—Still A Blind Spot for Organizational Design?

Based on conceptual reasoning, combined with illustrations from the air cargo industry, this article proposes a gradual broadening of the concept of what project management offices (PMOs) are responsible for to provide added value to the collaborating organizations when planning for and executing inter­organizational projects. Thus far, the ability of PMOs to support interorganizational projects and practices has been restricted—this goes for project management practice as well as a lack of concepts and theoretical reasoning from research in the domain of project studies. Against this background, this article distinguishes four types of PMOs and identifies promising organizational design elements pointing to functions and barriers, as well as to the interorganizational bridging practices of PMOs in support of their inter­organizational responsibilities.

IDEAL LOCATION SELECTION FOR CONTACTLESS PARCEL PICK-UP POINTS

The post-Covid era has witnessed the adoption of various new habits in our daily lives, particularly in relation to the ubiquitous e-commerce platforms that have become essential for urban populations. The surge in e-commerce activities and the intensified volume in delivery of packages during the pandemic sparked innovative ideas. This study explores one such creative concept: parcel pick-up points. We conducted a pioneering research endeavor to determine the optimal locations for these pick-up points in Istanbul, Turkey. Our methodology employed a novel hybrid approach, combining the Spherical Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). The evaluation of criteria importance was facilitated by a literature review and experienced high-level managers in the cargo industry, who determined the criteria weights using the Spherical Fuzzy AHP method. Subsequently, the TOPSIS method was employed to identify the most ideal locations, leading to the selection of Kadikoy, Umraniye, and Atasehir. This study provides valuable insights into the selection of the optimal locations for parcel pick-up points in Istanbul, Turkey, which can inform policymakers, e-commerce companies, and logistics stakeholders. The proposed hybrid approach demonstrates the integration of modern smart technologies with fuzzy decision-making techniques, offering a robust framework for decision support in the field of e-commerce logistics. Future research can further explore the implementation and effectiveness of these pick-up points to enhance the efficiency and convenience of last-mile deliveries in urban areas.

FACTORS INFLUENCING AIR CARGO POLICY DECISIONS AND IMPLEMENTATION IN NIGERIA: A STAKEHOLDER’S PERSPECTIVE

Policies are supposedly made such that their implementation for present growth does not hamper future development. However, it has been challenging to effectively implement some policy decisions based on stakeholders’ reactions to their sustainability in the air cargo industry. This paper examined the factors affecting air cargo policy decisions and their implementation in Nigeria by employing the quantitative research method and conducting a survey of stakeholders by random sampling at the Lagos International Airport through a well-designed research questionnaire. The data collected were analyzed using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Before estimating the PLS-SEM model, latent factors were constructed using EFA. The results reveal that the factors affecting the air cargo policy decisions and implementation include the policy formulation process, stakeholders’ interests and commitment, policy goals and implementation, and corruption and governance. The results imply that fundamental public policy issues prevail in Nigeria’s air cargo sector development programs. This study provides insight into the reasons behind opposition to implementing certain air cargo policy decisions in Nigeria. It offers directions for addressing the problems of poor policy decisions that do not guarantee future development. In practice, the study advocates the all-inclusive stakeholders’ involvement in Nigeria’s policy formulation process for the air cargo industry.

The path of management of dispute cases of legal issues of webcasting bandwagon industry in the information age

Abstract In this paper, for the common live streaming with cargo dispute cases in the context of the information technology era, the live streaming with cargo industry dispute case retrieval algorithm based on case-based reasoning calculates the attribute similarity measure and weights of the dispute cases in order to realize the live streaming with cargo industry dispute case retrieval. Three thousand judicial documents with live streaming with cargo disputes as the cause of the case were crawled from the China Judicial Documents Network as the initial data for the study and the method of BIOES was used to annotate the initial data and formulate eight basic legal elements of live streaming with cargo dispute cases. The form of extracting legal elements of live streaming with goods industry is transformed into a multi-label text classification task, and the neural network modeling method combined with the attention mechanism is used to design the extraction model of legal elements of the live streaming with goods dispute cases, and then the live streaming with goods dispute cases on the Internet are analyzed by examples. The results show that the Acc value of this paper’s model is 0.973, the Loss value is 0.051, and the F1 value is 0.981, and on the whole, this paper’s model performs better compared with the other five models, i.e., it shows that this paper’s model can be more intelligent and accurate to collect the case element information under the field of live streaming with goods disputes. This study aims to contribute to the development of a new sales model of live streaming with goods benignly.

Prioritization of Negative Carbon Strategies in the Cargo Industry with the SWARA/WASPAS Method

The ever-increasing consumption of fossil fuels with the increasing population in the world has brought along the obligation of countries to take some precautions. Determining the measures to be taken to prevent carbon emissions, turning these measures into a strategy and implementing them has become one of the important issues that concern almost every field. Reducing, neutralizing and turning negative carbon emissions significantly reduces the side effects of climate change. In this study, it is aimed to develop strategies within the scope of carbon negative by considering the cargo sector, which is one of the important fields of activity of the transportation sector, where the carbon emission rate is high. SWARA and WASPAS methods, which are among the Multi-Criteria Decision Making methods, are used in the evaluation phase of the strategies determined through the Delphi technique and literature review. Strategies are asked to be prioritized for the implementation of 16 determined strategies within the cargo sector, and “Using electric vehicles” ranked first in both methods. “Use of carbon capture, exploitation and storage technologies”, “Balancing greenhouse gas emissions”, “Existence of carbon tax to reduce carbon emissions” strategies have also been identified as other top priority strategies. It is thought that the strategies listed as a result of the study can help reduce our carbon footprint and help reach negative carbon by reducing CO2 levels in the atmosphere.

Green investing in China's air cargo industry: Opportunities and challenges for sustainable transportation

Aviation cargo remains vital in the economic activities to transported goods from one place to another. The developed and developing countries mainly consider the transaction routes for air transportation for safe and quickest mode. Chinese economy is attracting the global World through its exports. The country's air cargo system is mainly reliant on gasoline and petroleum-based fuels, which harms the country's green transportation agenda. The high use of fuel combustions in the aviation sector needed greenfield investment that helps to use green energy as an alternative sustainable fuel. Further, sustainable aviation insurance and financial coverage are needed to mitigate the adverse negative externalities from air cargo operations. Based on the crucial facts, the study used air cargo operations, transportation fuel combustions, private investment in the transportation and insurance coverage in the pollution damage function for the China economy using data from 1975 to 2020. The research employed a non-linear ARDL Bounds testing strategy to break down the sequence of variables into dynamic positive and negative multipliers. Positive shocks in air freight, insurance services, and greenfield investment have been shown to reduce carbon emissions immediately and over the long term. In the short term, carbon damages are exacerbated by the negative shocks resulting from the use of transportation fuel and the availability of insurance. Moreover, both the positive and negative shocks associated with transportation fuel combustions and air transportation freights contribute to a rise in carbon damage. The variance decomposition analysis validated the asymmetric correlations between the aforementioned variables in the intertemporal environment. Based on the findings, negative shocks from total fuel combustions are expected to impose the greatest carbon damages over the next decade, followed by insurance services and air freight operations. The study concludes that air cargo operations need to be sustainable transacting routes fueled by biofuel energy sources, greenfield investment, and sustainable aviation insurance coverage to achieve the ‘green is clean’ transportation agenda.

Structure and Conduct of the Ocean Freight Cargo Container Industry

The existence of globalization increases economic activity between countries. International trade activities are divided into two categories: exports and imports. Sea mode transportation requires tools to transport goods safely from the origin country to the destination country. These tools are called containers or cargo containers. The cargo container shipping industry is an industry that provides containers. The purpose of this study are to: 1) prove that the market structure in the ocean freight container cargo industry is oligopoly, 2) analyse the influence of market structure on behaviour in the ocean freight container cargo industry, and 3) prove the existence of market power in the ocean freight container cargo industry. This research uses time series data from 2010–2022 and cross section data from 100 companies. Data collection was conducted through non-participant observation and interviews. By using secondary data from companies in the global cargo container industry and interviews. Using SCP theory, the analysis techniques used are concentration ratio, HHI, market entry barriers, behaviour, and market performance. The results of the study found that the cargo container industry market is a moderately low-concentration oligopoly with high market entry barriers. Market structure influences corporate behaviour in the container industry. Market structure and company behaviour affect market performance through market power.

AN ASSESSMENT OF CHALLENGES AND FACTOR INFLUENCING THE FREIGHT FORWARDING BUSINESS IN THE LOGISTICS INDUSTRY

This research was undertaken with the sole aim of understanding some of the challenges and Factor Influencing the Freight Forwarding Business in the organizations involved the Forwarding and distribution of shipper Cargo encounter in their logistics operations. A freight forwarder is a person or company that organizes shipments for individuals or corporations to get large orders from the manufacturer or producer to market or final point of distribution. Forwarders will contract with a carrier to facilitate the movement of goods. A forwarder is not typically a carrier but is an expert in supply chain management. In other words, a freight forwarder is a "travel agent," for the cargo industry, or a third-party (non-asset-based) logistics provider. A forwarder will contract with asset- based carriers to move cargo ranging from raw agricultural products to manufactured goods. The term Logistics Management or supply chain management is that part of Supply Chain Management that plans, implements, and controls the efficient, effective, forward, and reverse flow and storage of goods, services, and related information between the point of origin and the point of consumption in order to meet customer's requirements. The research targeted a selected sample of Employees and representatives of transporters of goods and key management personnel of Companies Central Distribution Center based in the industrial area Chennai. The primary objective of this project is to conduct ‘A study on Challenges and factor influencing the freight forwarding business in the Freightkare Multimodal Logistics Pvt. ltd. It is important to analyze the problems faced by freight forwarders from the carriers as well as companies and individual customers. By studying and comparing the various problems faced by the freight forwarders. It is easy identifying the solutions to avoid the problems and make sure the smooth flow of business. This will help Freightkare Multimodal Logistics Pvt. ltd to establish a reasonable share in the marketplace.

In-Vehicle Loading Optimization System for the Cargo Industry

In the intense operation in the cargo sector, by using the vehicles carrying cargo between transits more optimally, it is essential to minimize the unused idle areas inside the vehicles, to set off the vehicles in the cargo transfer centers with a correct and efficient arrangement, faster, and to increase the service quality by carrying more cargo.
 For this purpose, the problem of in-vehicle loading optimization is studied within the scope of this research. Again, within the scope of this research, in-vehicle loading optimization for the cargo sector is carried out; by calculating the dimensions of the packages to be placed in the vehicle, An optimization methodology is proposed, which can ensure that the cargo packages reach the maximum number and the interior volume is minimal. 
 A prototype implementation of the proposed methodology has been developed. The developed prototype application will enable cargo loading planning and in-vehicle optimization of vehicles operated for companies in the cargo sector. The prototype application's success was tested on a sample vehicle loading dataset, and successful results were obtained.

An optimization-based decision support tool for air cargo loading

In this research, we study the air cargo loading problem that aims to assign cargo containers to appropriate loading positions within a freight carrier aircraft. Here, as we deal with an aircraft that has been specially reconfigured into a freight aircraft from originally a passenger aircraft, this leads to a novel air cargo loading problem that is subject to four types of constraints, namely: assignment constraints; maximum position weight limits and zero fuel weight limit considerations; center of gravity (CG) envelope limiting conditions, which are based on the aircraft weight and fluctuating CG during the fueling process; respecting panel weight limits (a legacy constraint from the passenger aircraft structure), which are related to the CG envelope; and finally, lateral imbalance limits for double-row cargo configurations. We minimize the deviation from an optimal CG value, which is determined based on fuel economy and safety restrictions. This problem is formulated as a 0–1 mixed-integer nonlinear programming model, which is subsequently linearized, and four different types of aircraft configurations are utilized to test our formulation. The results indicate that significant improvements can be achieved as compared to a more traditionally used method in the freight cargo industry. Finally, we highlight a user-oriented, functional, and graphically appealing decision support tool, based on the proposed optimization framework, that has been developed and deployed at a major air cargo operator in Singapore.

The Impact of Air Cargo on Regional Economic Development: Evidence from Chinese Cities

This study explored the impact of the air cargo industry on the regional economy by regressing panel data for 91 prefecture-level cities in China from 2006 to 2019. By using the total employment and the employment of the 19 sub-industries as indicators of regional economic development, results show that only the growth of employment in the manufacturing sector is significantly and positively associated with the growth of air cargo volume. This study then explores the heterogeneity of the impact of air cargo on manufacturing employment in different types of cities by using a dummy variable interaction term and finds that in terms of the elasticity of growth of air cargo on manufacturing employment, southwest, and northwest regions are significantly higher than other regions, inland cities are significantly higher than coastal port cities, and major gateway cities are significantly lower than non-major gateway cities. Our research shows that air cargo development can lead to manufacturing industry clustering, while air cargo infrastructure development is more important for the economic development of inland regions and secondary gateway cities.

АНАЛИЗ РАЗВИТИЯ РЫНКА ТРАНСПОРТНО-ГРУЗОВЫХ УСЛУГ РЕСПУБЛИКИ УЗБЕКИСТАН

The article assesses the state of the transport and cargo services market in the Republic of Uzbekistan, as well as it reviews an issue of a scientific rationale of an optimal placement of cargo facilities in the republic. The analysis of the problems in transport services shows that freight traffic flows have spread out, negative trends have manifested themselves in a form of a regular growth of the cost of fuel and energy resources, tightening of regulatory requirements, growth of customs duties, sanctions in the form of a cancellation of previously introduced benefits, and more. However, such indicators of the rail freight transportation as a speed of container transportation and average travel time are stable in the rail traffic, i.e. diversification of the cargo base and a tendency to full capacity use take place. The article makes use of scientific methods of analysis and synthesis, classification, mathematical statistics. A roadmap of qualitative transformations from reorganization of the transport and cargo industry is being proposed, which will lead to positive results for the transport infrastructure as a whole. The research findings will further reveal capabilities of terminal networks which are expected to ensure prompt deliveries of large volumes of required cargos to domestic and foreign markets, smooth functioning of the infrastructure that is needed for the placement of cargo facilities on the railway network. The focus of the study is the state of the transport infrastructure and its decisive role in trade.

Advances in Air Cargo Financing Using a Consortium Blockchain

Blockchain is the foundational technology of various cryptocurrencies. It has features such as nontempering, decentralization, security, anonymity, etc. Its distributed ledger technology has received broad research and industry attention. Cryptography, hash functions, peer-to-peer (P2P) consensus and smart contracts are being used in a wide variety of applications across industries to solve various problems. Supply chain finance is a model in which various financial institutions connect with stakeholders in the supply chain to optimize working capital and liquidity invested in supply chain processes and transactions. The Air Cargo industry is one of the essential parts of various global supply chains. Consisting of multiple nodes, the complexity in its structure makes it difficult for credit risk analysis for the creditors. Information asymmetry leads to a lack of trust between companies and creditors. Frauds and disruptions in the Air Cargo industry make it vulnerable from the perspective of Financial Institutions. A platform for Air Cargo Financing using Blockchain (ACFB) is proposed in this study to solve these problems; this would make a supply chain more transparent, trustworthy, and efficient for all the stakeholders and financial institutions.

Evaluating Freight Forwarders in the Air Cargo Industry

Freight forwarders are of great importance in the air cargo industry. As the cargo revenue constitutes an important source for airline companies, the evaluation of freight forwarders is vital for airlines’ success. This study employs DEMATEL method in order to prioritize the determined criteria for evaluating freight forwarders from the point of view of an airline. The calculated importance weights are used in an illustrative problem where the ranking of freight forwarders are obtained by employing the simple additive weighting method.

Control Design and Assessment for a Reversing Tractor–Trailer System Using a Cascade Controller

In recent years, control design for unmanned systems, especially a tractor–trailer system, has gained popularity among researchers. The emergence of such interest is caused by the potential reduction in cost and shortage of number of workers and labors. Two industries will benefit from the advancements of these types of systems: agriculture and cargo. By using the unmanned tractor–trailer system, harvesting and cultivating plants will become a safe and easy task. It will also cause a reduction in cost which in turn reduces the price on the end consumers. On the other hand, by using the unmanned tractor–trailer system in the cargo industry, shipping cost and time for the item delivery will be reduced. The work presented in this paper focuses on the development of a path tracking and a cascaded controller to control a tractor–trailer in reverse motion. The path tracking controller utilizes the Frenet–Serret frame to control the kinematics of the tractor–trailer system on a desired path, while the cascade controller’s main objective is to stabilize the system and to perform commands issued by the path tracker. The controlled parameters in this proposed design are the lateral distance to a path, trailer’s heading angel, articulated angel, and articulated angle’s rate. The main goal of such controller is to follow a path while the tractor–trailer system is moving in reverse and controlling the stability of the articulated vehicle to prevent the occurrence of a jackknife incident (uncontrolled state). The proposed controller has been tested in a different scenario where a successful implementation has been shown.

Investigating the Implications of the London Heathrow Airport Expansion for the Landside Freight Industry

The air cargo industry is hugely important to national economies, trade, and development. Thus far, there has been limited research on the landside freight industry. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to extend the understanding of how alterations in the air cargo industry impact on its landside freight counterpart. It also seeks to explore the potential opportunities and challenges this presents, as well as the measures that can be taken to mitigate unsustainable development for the landside freight industry. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect the views of key stakeholders, freight industry experts, and other professionals. Our findings show that, if the airport expansion went ahead, the opportunities would generally outweigh the challenges. Increased freight activities and other positive spinoffs would result in the long-term. Increased freight activities and employment were the prime positive implications. Conversely, increased delays due to congestion was the main negative implication. Measures suggested to mitigate the adverse effects of the London Heathrow Airport (LHR) expansion entailed strengthening of consolidation centre efforts, freight collaboration, intelligent booking systems, use of low-carbon technologies, smart scheduling for revising the timetabling of deliveries, and greater use of rail transport for air cargo. The research highlights novel insights regarding existing freight-related issues from industry and academic experts, and further thoughts in relation to increased cargo activities stemming from the LHR expansion.

A simulation and analytic hierarchy process based decision support system for air cargo warehouse capacity design

Warehouse design is critical in the air cargo industry, where service standards are high and competition is fierce. The designers of air cargo warehouses consider various criteria like costs, system failure risks, customer perception, and marketing power to evaluate alternative designs. The issue of designing an air cargo warehouse is generally considered by design and consulting companies, which have broad experience in operational design are lacking in suggesting robust alternatives that build upon on a well-structured theoretical framework. The alternative warehouse designs are generated by considering different combinations of resource capacities such as the number of gates, workstations and storage areas. The evaluation of these alternative designs requires the use of analytical methodologies for multi-criteria decision-making. At this point, two methodologies from literature may be helpful: (i) simulation, which is a popular tool to evaluate operational performance and (ii) the analytical hierarchy process (AHP), which provides the ability to evaluate qualitative as well as quantitative criteria. In this study, a flexible and user-friendly decision support system (DSS) is developed based on combining simulation and AHP. The DSS is used to generate design alternatives, evaluate their quantitative performance via simulation, and subsequently rank the best scoring ones via AHP according to a set of quantitative as well as qualitative decision criteria. The graphical interfaces are designed with a keen eye on man-machine interaction to increase their functionality. The environment is tested and validated with real-time data in one of Europe’s largest air cargo carriers.

Istanbul Airport (IGA) and quest of best competitive strategy for air cargo carriers in new competition environment: A fuzzy multi-criteria approach

Our paper determines the best competitive strategy that can be implemented by existing and potential air cargo carriers in the Turkish Air Cargo Industry with the operationalization of Istanbul Airport (IGA) and reveals the competitiveness level of the industry for four bases. We look at the competitiveness levels by analyzing the competitive environment of the industry nationally and internationally both before and post IGA (estimated). We use fuzzy TOPSIS (FTOPSIS) based on the Fuzzy AHP (FAHP) to handle vagueness, which is inherent in the nature of new competition conditions integrating the framework of Porter's five forces analysis. In our study, we use the five forces as our main criteria (with a total of 19 sub-criteria) and the competitive strategies as our alternatives. Our results reveal that the cost-focused strategy is the best competitive strategy that can be implemented by existing and potential carriers in the industry. Another significant result underscores the fact that IGA increases the competitiveness level of the Turkish Air Cargo Industry both nationally and internationally to a fairly high level. Also, the threat of potential competitors is first among the five forces in the industry's new conditions. Our study fills the gap in the literature on the effects of major structural changes in an air cargo industry on the competition among carriers.