A Study on Information System Improvement for Air Logistics SCM

Compared with land logistics and sea logistics, air logistics takes not only less transportation time, but also makes just-in-time delivery possible. Because of this, in spite of high freight rates, many shippers make good use of airlines. To cope with borderless competition in this global age, most shippers using air logistics want to receive diverse information including just-in-time cargo delivery and dangerous situation as well as convenience and speed in job handling. Nevertheless, most domestic forwarders, who perform many kinds of important businesses for air logistics, mainly put emphasis on demanding information from overseas partners through their business agreements, that is, focusing on horizontal integration, instead of sharing information or improving job performance among air logistics participants. As a result, it is almost impossible to satisfy the needs of shippers. Airline users want to remove the uncertainties over their cargo movement. And in time of emergency, they want to take immediate measures through speedy information sharing and decision-making. In order to satisfy shipper's needs, all the organizations participating in the air logistics supply chain-cargo senders, cargo receivers, forwarders, transporters, licensed customs brokers, airlines as well as foreign partners-have to set up a vertical cooperation system. For effective air logistics SCM, it is very important to remove overlapping jobs, strengthen the efficiency of job handling, and provide online monitoring on cargo information in order to support decision-making. To this end, this paper has applied the concept of RTE (Real Time Enterprise), a new business management system, which tries to maximize competitiveness by removing many hindrance factors on an ongoing basis in managing and fulfilling core business processes based on up-to-the-minute information. In order to realize RTE-based information system for air logistics SCM, this paper has analyzed the information required by business process and by air logistics participant, and suggested the method for information sharing, point of time for information input and output, and its means.