Cédric Millet, CargoTech’s President, and its members illustrate ways in which the group leverages AI to support decision-making and clear up some of the myths surrounding the technology.
“On a scale of 1-10, I’d say the air cargo industry is currently at 3 when it comes to adopting AI-assisted decision-making,” says Cédric Millet, President of CargoTech.
AI is sporadically used in different segments of the air cargo industry – mostly in customer service and engagement functions, because these have the greatest similarity to processes in other, more digitally-developed industries.
Much of the air cargo industry is still in the phase of digitizing its operations and starting to accumulate data volumes.
Millet explains: “To embark on the journey of AI-assisted decision-making, it is crucial to extract a large volume of data to train the models and to identify anomalies for better decision-making, going forward,”
Data is currently heavily fragmented across stakeholders, leading to huge inefficiencies. AI models have the potential to be capable of synthesizing data across the supply chain, thus promoting better end-to-end visibility and decision-making.
CargoAi already offers advanced AI-driven tools that assist in streamlining decision-making for logistics professionals, such as its CargoCOPILOT product: CargoAi’s AI email plugin enables the frontline workforce to retrieve dynamic rates directly via their inbox, without having to search across platforms.
Another practical application of AI aimed at enhancing commercial decision-making processes and born of collaboration with a number of airlines, is Rotate’s ‘Fair Share Analysis’ which not only informs airlines about their market position regarding market share and yield level, but is also a critical component when it comes to optimizing an airline’s network and Origin-Destination (OD) sales mix.
Here, AI leverages proprietary capacity data and machine learning algorithms, incorporating market data to generate fair share estimations.
Unlike the charter niche, the general air cargo industry faces the challenge of an abundance of data.
Michael Teoh, head of strategy at CargoTech says: “For a long period, the air cargo industry suffered from data scarcity, when it came to advanced data analysis. As data availability increased, Business Intelligence (BI) dashboards proliferated, sparking enthusiasm about the possibilities of applying Artificial Intelligence (AI) to revolutionize air cargo operations. However, there’s often a misconception that AI, in itself, will be able to solve some of the industry’s biggest challenges,”
Wiremind Cargo’s models are developed to be as accurate and give the best recommendations possible, but there will always be scenarios where the model may not have seen something before, or users need to intervene.
One complaint regarding AI is that it often acts as a ‘black box’, giving a recommended output but without showing how it came to its result.
Wiremind Cargo proactively seeks to improve on this: Alongside its model recommendations, CargoStack Optimizer modules aim to transparently share relevant insights to users that show how the result was generated and allow them to make an informed decision as to whether they want to keep the value or override it (which they are always empowered to do).
Cédric Millet states: “There is often the misconception that AI leads to a reduction in employees.
“At CargoTech, we believe that roles will not be replaced, but specific tasks within them may change.”
For example, sales staff will be relieved from having to spend time analysing data and trends to uncover target customers, as AI can identify sales leads and therefore enable the salesperson to spend more time with each customer.
“AI will reshape roles to meet evolving needs, thus ensuring sustainability and empowering employees as they focus on strategic work and are encouraged to upskill with new tools,” he predicts.
Through the automation of repetitive tasks, AI helps streamline processes, reduce errors, and enhance efficiency. And another bonus: “Cutting-edge technology attracts younger generations to the industry,”
