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In today's rapidly evolving business environment, innovation and the adoption of new technologies are crucial to stay ahead of the curve.
Many large air cargo service providers have started to experiment with the use of artificial intelligence, often with a technology partner like CHAMP.
Some of the most prolific use cases include scanning to digitize paper air waybills, helping to price ad hoc shipments more accurately and dynamically, and forecasting to better manage resources and results.
Many innovative ideas for artificial intelligence (AI) never make it to production, either because they do not have the high-quality and normalized data needed, or because the data available is not well suited to the problem being addressed.
These are reasons why service providers such as CHAMP, who see masses of operational data from multiple clients, are best placed to develop, even private, services.
Machine learning is the most common entry point for AI. It uses massive amounts of structured data to identify patterns and learning. The broader description of AI though, includes the use of non-structured data such as text documents, newsfeeds, images, and speech.
CHAMP is using machine learning in our MarketAnalytics service to help agents price an ad hoc shipment by calculating and showing them the previous twelve weeks’ price evolution for the proposed shipment’s exact routing, weight, handling codes, day of week, etc. That can be seen as a step forward from traditional yield management techniques.
We have also leveraged AI in A2Z Scan which saves time and reduces human error by scanning paper air waybills, finding key fields, and translating them to a digital format.
We are also exploring how AI can help identify customs harmonized commodity codes in ONE Record and cargo management systems.
Some interesting industry experiments with AI include predicting no-shows to optimize load factors, enhancing goods inspections, detecting anomalies, and reviewing air waybills to identify sanctions, safety, and security issues.
There is huge potential from analyzing visual inputs, but maybe the biggest use case will come from better forecasting because of its obvious potential to optimize services across the supply chain.
In all cases, results will multiply in value as more structured and unstructured data feeds are captured and used.
CHAMP recently hosted a webinar on the topic of digitalization in the air cargo industry, and how businesses can streamline operations through digital transformation. A recording of our webinar on digitalization is available to download HERE.
