Peak season demand, supply chain disruptions stress need for ULD digitalization

The collapse of scheduled passenger networks in Spring 2020, along with this year’s port and airport closures in China have led air cargo executives to emphasize the need for unit load device (ULD) digitalization efforts and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology as a way to minimize container losses and keep equipment from entering a black hole of visibility. [caption id="attachment_53576" align="alignright" width="353"] Photo/Unilode[/caption] Due to the past year’s disruptions to the supply chain, more carriers in turn are expressing interest in outsourcing ULD management , Adam Barrington-Spencer, vice president of global commercial operations and customer experience at Switzerland-based ULD management company Unilode Aviation Solutions, told Air Cargo World . “What we are seeing now is much of the same as what we saw during the financial crisis,” Barrington-Spencer said . “Airlines are saying, again, we've got operational challenges, shortages of ULDs; we've got this displacement, we also have all these other ULDs we don't use right now. [So] can we generate cash for them? Can we sell them? Can we improve our operation?” Considering the industry’s state of digitalization, managing and tracking ULDs is difficult, and can lead to a “blackout area,” according to Barrington-Spencer. “The level of [ULD] loss that you would see in an integrator such as UPS, DHL is very minimal because they have a level of visibility,” Barrington-Spencer said. However, this isn’t the case with general cargo as it gets processed through different systems and handlers, he added. "It is still a little mind-boggling that you can fly a piece of freight from Europe into O'Hare … and then once the aircraft is offloaded, you basically have no idea where the freight is, and you're going to wait for up to two weeks,” Niels Larsen, president of logistics company DSV Panalpina North America, said during Air Cargo World ’s Aug. 4 webinar panel on ULD best practices. "The main problem is the congested warehouses, where ULD and the cargo that is loaded on the ULD or PMC [pallet] is then going into this big black hole because we don’t know when we can get it out.” To combat the potential loss of shipments, Unilode is is taking part in an ongoing project to digitally tag its ULD fleet . Currently, the company has digitally tagged 70,000 ULDs, saving thousands from going into a blackout area, Barrington-Spencer said. Unilode aims to digitally tag 140,000 ULDs by early 2022. In an Air Cargo World webinar earlier this month, panelist Guillaume Crozier , divisional vice president of operations and development at dnata, said that dnata has started to equip its warehouse with BLE technology readers since last year on behalf of airline customers. Crozier further noted that dnata is working on a ULD optimization program with technology company Speed Cargo to improve ULD processes. While dnata, alongside companies like logistics technology platform Descartes and Unilode, has worked to develop and support the digitalization of ULD processes , there is still much to be done, according to the webinar panelists. “We have to be able to do better as an industry toward the importing and exporting commodity, and that means that the freight forwarders, the airlines, the trucking companies and the ground handlers have to come together,” DSV’s Larsen said during the webinar. “The technology is out there, but it’s a matter of us as an industry to raise the bar to make that technology more broadly used in our companies and in the supply chain in general … we need to embrace it, and we need to invest in it.”

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