Cleared and delivered
Passengers are not the only ones keen to get from A to B quickly. The forwarding firm Gerhard Wegmüller also wants its airfreighted consignments to reach their destination rapidly – which is why it banks on K & S Informatik‘s ‘cargo arrival’ solution at Zurich airport.
Not every airfreight expert can advertise a personal presence at an airport for 58 uninterrupted years – Gerhard Wegmüller can. At the tender age of 18 he moved from Basel to Zurich. All these years later he remains an innovator. At the end of 2018 his eponymous forwarding enterprise has once again been a pioneer at Zurich Kloten airport, having deployed a new electronic airfreight tool there.
The ongoing global digitalisation process prompted Wegmüller to seek to combine paperless airfreight processing at Zurich airport with the speeding up of processes. He succeeded, with the help of the ‘cargo arrival’ tool, developed by K & S Informatik, a provider of logistics and customs software.
The first step in the ‘cargo arrival’ process entails sending off a pre-alert list. Import consignments that are due to arrive next are then shown, assembled in daily lists. These lists are automatically established at 6 p.m., 12 noon and 9 a.m., and include pre-compiled files as well as prepared declarations.
Four more steps to the goal
An ‘arrival notice’ is the second step. It is issued for every consignment, and involves comparing data (weight and number of parcels) with that registered in the file. Any discrepancy that goes beyond what is allowed on account of deviations in the packaging material used is signalled in red. The internal customs declaration number is also lodged in the file. Time-critical shipments (CRI, AOG) are highlighted on the screen by a colour in ‘cargo arrival’; they start blinking if a deadline has been missed.
This brings the processor to the third step. After the internal check up of the documents has been completed, they are dispatched to customs clearance with a click. The response declaring whether the shipment has been cleared or is blocked comes back within seconds. As the fourth step the shipment can then be delivered. The point of delivery is added to the file and the data (date, time, handed over by, received by) is lodged in the system. The order is then removed from the ‘cargo arrival’ section – unless the customs authority asks for a revision.
Several advantages; future spread
Even if a consignment is blocked the goods can be delivered after a 30-minute intervention period. The entry remains on-screen until all of the customs documents are in order and the consignment has been manually deleted from the screen. The process saves around 45 minutes per AWB.
For K & S founder and CEO Rainer A. Stawarz the solution has passed its test. “The processes used in our ‘cargo arrival’ model can be transferred to other airports too,” he said.