Category Archives: Technology

DHL Global Forwarding has opened its first temperature-controlled facility in Hyderabad to meet the growing demand for reliable temperature-controlled transportation from point of departure to arrival. Located in the cargo satellite building close to the airport in Hyderabad, the new facility offers conditioning of packaging materials in different chambers for varying temperatures up to -20̊ C, to meet the stringent needs of pharmaceutical shipments. “To meet the intricate requirements of each life science and healthcare shipment, our goal is to ensure that all goods are vigilantly handled by DHL’s core team of professionals with customised end-to-end solutions,” says, Niki Frank, CEO, DHL Global Forwarding, India, in adding, “By sending pre-conditioned packaging units to our customers’ premises to pick up temperature-sensitive medicines and vaccines, we ensure that the highest possible integrity of temperature control is achieved within the supply chain during export.”

In order to maintain unbroken cold chain for time and temperature sensitive shipments such as pharmaceuticals and perishables, GMR Hyderabad International Airport has ramped up its cargo capabilities by introducing a Multi ULD (Unit Load Device) Cool Dolly. The Multi ULD Cool Dolly at Hyderabad Air Cargo was virtually launched today by Vandana Aggarwal (IES), Senior Economic Advisor, Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) during the third Webinar on ‘Air Cargo-Changing Dimensions’ organised by GMR Group as part of its ongoing webinar series on ‘Reposing the faith in flying’. Comprising of a steel trailer and aluminum insulated container, the Cool Dolly acts as a mobile storage unit from air cargo terminal to the aircraft. They provide an unbroken cold chain to all the perishable shipments of temperatures of +2⁰C to +8⁰C and +15⁰C to +25⁰C and can handle around 7-tons of cargo in a single trip.

Hans Infomatic launches iCAFFE mobile app to transform freight forwarders business process Hans Infomatic has come up with a new mobile app for its ‘iCAFFE’ users. It is web based freight forwarding software which helps organisations in providing work flexibility options to their employees while making sure they don’t lose grip on productivity during such challenging times.This is a digital transformation of the complete business process which aids working from a safe environment of home or any remote area, adapting to the digital world for an employee and employer. “The app will enable the freight forwarding community to operate smoothly from any remote place, thereby providing business continuity to their clients with many built in features,”says, Parvinder Singh, Managing Director,Hans Infomatic.    The app has features like check & update live status of job by field or remote staff, view & update shipping bill, bill of entry and send, receive or store e-documents, generation of various reports along with few other handy and important features.

As part of its efforts to reduce waiting times at airports, Jan de Rijk Logistics, the road feeder firm, has signed up with Trucking CDM for to manage slot allocation planning mechanism between truckers and handlers. The industry is under pressure to reduce costs but also achieve faster transit times between European airports, because much of the trucking operation is spent waiting at airports. Stefan Pieters, Manager of Operations & Development, Jan de Rijk, says, “Our biggest challenge boils down to the waiting hours spent at cargo handling facilities, caused by lack of communication and transparency. As there is often no contractual relation between the trucker and the handler both parties operate on behalf of the airline but not directly connected to each other. If we could share data about when the freight is available, the status of vehicle combined shipment information we could communicate much better with the handler thus creating, insight and data sharing for all parties involved.” The Trucking CDM platform provides transparency, predictability and a slot allocation planning mechanism between truckers and handlers. It allows data sharing between the involved stakeholders in regard to the truck movement.

Turkish Cargo has launched a new artificial intelligence chatbot, called CARGY, to provide customers round-the-clock updates about the status of their cargo shipments. The artificial intelligence based chatbot ‘Cargy’ gives information about available dates and flights for shipments. Cargy will offer the opportunity to inquire the rate details at its second phase in September and will provide other details related to the cargo at its third phase which will go live in December. The airline has added that it is enhancing and digitising its technological infrastructure to enhance its service quality.

Portall Infosystems has collaborated with GOCON in order to provide trucking services on PCS1x; a cloud based new generation technology with user-friendly interface The service is already live on PCS 1x. GOCON, a digital transport aggregator platform that connects operators (Trailers and Truckers) with shippers, has on-boarded the collaborative P-CaSo platform. The company is known for its ability to deliver effective transportation solutions vide their own and leased fleet across the country. Shirishchandra Shah, Chief Product Officer, Portall, said “Coming from the well known transportation fleet owner Roadwings – Portall has good reason to believe GOCON will serve the trade well. We thank IPA for their support to add trucking services as a functionality on PCS 1x to better serve the ecosystem.” “We have an established transport company with a large owned and leased fleet who have now embraced digital business. We are pleased to tie up with Portall whose work in the digital landscape of India is well known and appreciated.” Pratyaksh Sureka, Founder, GOCON. IPA (Indian Ports Association), an autonomous body under the Ministry Of Shipping, which launched the PCS 1x in Dec 2018 has been working closely with the trade to expand functionality and features and the addition of this service has ensured that the users can get attractive rates which can help bring down the logistics costs.

“The extraordinary crisis always leads to extraordinary opportunities,” says Amar More, CEO, Kale Logistics Solutions at CargoTalk’s third digital conclave. Taking about the role of technology in the time crisis, he says, “If we look at the attitude towards digitisation; technology has moved from nice to have thing to necessary evil to now a business driver. The role of technology is increasing in the industry; those who had the right technology could operate in those pandemic days.” “Paper is just not a piece, it means delays, environmental damage and in some places it means corruption and now it is a death threat because COVID-19 stays on paper for three to four days. India is world’s IT backbone and we should be leading the world rather than following the world,” he adds.

The third edition of CargoTalk digital conclave will begin today at 10 am till 12:15 pm. There will be two sessions each of one-hour duration, which will lay emphasis on re-engineering the future. Experts from air cargo and road logistics will share their views. Panelists for first session titled ‘Digitalisation: Building and Enabling Confidence’ (10am-11am) will be Saurabh Kumar, CEO, GMR Hyderabad Air Cargo, Amar More, Director, Kale Logistics Solutions and Keku Gazder, CEO, AAICLAS. For the second session, titled ‘The Road ahead – Driving to Success’ (11:15am-12:15pm), there will be Chander Agarwal, Managing Director, TCI Express, Aditya Shah, Executive Director, V-Trans India and Ashok Goyal, Managing Director, BLR Logistiks.

With people and transportation constantly flowing in and out of the warehouse property, it’s a constant hub of activity. It puts them at risk for many things, like a fire, or a flood, product damage, or employee safety. Among them, theft is a critical problem. Warehouses have commonly incorporated video cameras to help catch activity going on in and around the property. But in most cases, when loss is identified, the warehouse manager or security staff turn to the video security system to search for the right footage. The challenge is that there is an ocean of video footage, and sometimes none of it clearly tells what happened. This makes forensic search difficult and time-consuming. In short, conventional video monitoring systems cannot effectively help identify an intrusion event at the time it is happening and thus prevent at the very beginning. Accurate trespassing alarm Video monitoring with accurate trespassing alerts on the detection of a human intrusion event will be a great improvement. Today’s security products equipped with Prama Hikvision’s AcuSense technology automatically send out alerts when a human or a vehicle is detected. With an advanced deep learning algorithm, technology precisely distinguishes and categorizes objects into human, vehicle and other. Alarms triggered by the ‘other’ objects such as a beam of light, an animal, the movement of foliage, etc., are disregarded, leaving the true events which are associated with humans and vehicles for users and security personnel to focus and act. Additionally, related videos are automatically sorted by categories for easier search. Focused technology in action So in the warehouse setup, AcuSense cameras are installed to stay alert day and night. If an intruder enters an area of attention, …

“In order to streamline the logistics eco-system in the country, a National Logistics Efficiency and Advancement Predictability & Safety Act (NLEAPS) is under consideration,” informs, Pawan Agarwal, Special Secretary (Logistics), Ministry of Commerce & Industry at a webinar organized by the PHD Chambers of Commerce. Stressing on defining the various elements in the logistics sector, he says, “What the logistics sector is all about is not very clear to us as of now. The government is considering replacing the multimodal transportation of goods law with national logistics law to promote growth of the sector.” “The high logistics cost of country is impacting the competitiveness of domestic goods in the international market. India’s logistics sector is highly fragmented and the government aims to reduce the logistics cost from the present 14 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product to less than 10 per cent,” tells Agarwal. He continues, “During the times of COVID-19, there has been a disruption in the supply chain and movement of truck with many of the supplies diverting to the rail; making it a reliable and cost effective mode of transportation. In these indispensable times, we have realised the importance of essential services with their regular supply chains,” he adds. According to Agarwal, digitisation of logistics is the need of the hour which will increase the efficiency in movement of goods. He also informs that the government is working on creating digital platforms and mobiles apps for logistics such as warehouse information tracking and trading yard (WITTY), among others to mapping of warehouses. Agarwal believes that logistics is a sector that needs to realise the vision of ‘Aatma Nirbhar Bharat’.