Risk management application for the IATA e-freight initiative in air cargo industry
Chernova, Tatyana (2014)
2014
Master's Degree Programme in Business and Technology
Talouden ja rakentamisen tiedekunta - Faculty of Business and Built Environment
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Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2014-12-03
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tty-201411211549
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tty-201411211549
Tiivistelmä
E-freight is air cargo industry-wide project that aims to remove paper from the process of freight movement. International Air Transport Association (IATA) originally initiated this project in 2007. At the time of its initiation air cargo sector was heavily relied on paper-based processes, and all documents were flowing between the air cargo supply chain members starting from a consignor and finishing at consignee. E-freight promises to bring significant benefits such as cost savings, quality and reliability improvements, visibility, speed, simplicity and regulatory advantage. But high complexity in air cargo supply chains makes the process of documents digitalization very challenging and sophisticated for all the stakeholders involved. Complexity entails risks based on the in-terdependencies between the process participants that have to be identified to ensure e-freight successful implementation for all parties.
This study is based on the research in Finnish air cargo industry. The objective of this work is to identify risks and apply risk management practices to the IATA e-freight ini-tiative in order to provide a model that could be widely applicable for other industries with complex supply chains. The objective is achieved by focusing on separate supply chain members’ perspectives, analyzing the gaps between the real situation and the de-sired, and identifying the biggest risks for industry-wide project implementation.
Finnish air cargo industry is selected as an example of an industry currently entering the digital way of information exchange. Thus, interviews and questionnaires distribution were arranged with the professionals from companies’ both management and operational level. The results of the study show that besides the fact of the highly industrialized information technologies solutions developed for e-freight project, human factor still plays the major role in the industry-wide project adoption. Such factors as reluctance for a change, chained paper-based traditional processes, weak preparation and testing phases of IT solutions slows down e-freight implementation significantly. Highly interdependent supply chain players affect operational level decisions of each other due to the listed factors, and, at the same time may have an impact on strategic decisions.
This study is based on the research in Finnish air cargo industry. The objective of this work is to identify risks and apply risk management practices to the IATA e-freight ini-tiative in order to provide a model that could be widely applicable for other industries with complex supply chains. The objective is achieved by focusing on separate supply chain members’ perspectives, analyzing the gaps between the real situation and the de-sired, and identifying the biggest risks for industry-wide project implementation.
Finnish air cargo industry is selected as an example of an industry currently entering the digital way of information exchange. Thus, interviews and questionnaires distribution were arranged with the professionals from companies’ both management and operational level. The results of the study show that besides the fact of the highly industrialized information technologies solutions developed for e-freight project, human factor still plays the major role in the industry-wide project adoption. Such factors as reluctance for a change, chained paper-based traditional processes, weak preparation and testing phases of IT solutions slows down e-freight implementation significantly. Highly interdependent supply chain players affect operational level decisions of each other due to the listed factors, and, at the same time may have an impact on strategic decisions.