An Analysis and Design for the Repair Process of Late Show

Shipments in the Export Cargo Process at SPL HUB

Sjoerd van Rooden

, Catya Zuniga

, Bart Krol

and Elias Olivares-Benitez

Faculty of Technology, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Weesperzijde 190, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

KLM Cargo, Schiphol, The Netherlands

Facultad de Ingenieria, Universidad Panamericana, Zapopan, Mexico

Keywords: Late Shipments, Late Shows, Repair Process, Acceptance Process, Business Process Modelling, Air Cargo

Operations.

Abstract: Export shipments arriving late at the freight building of KLM Cargo at Schiphol Airport is a trigger to

deviations in the standard acceptance process. These Late Shows are currently handled ad-hoc making it

difficult to plan and predict these events. By conducting a data analysis to quantitatively identify the

characteristics of the Late Shows, and by conducting stakeholder interviews to understand the current process

and discuss the future process, this research tried to design the operational process of the Late Shows to

improve the operational excellence and quality of the acceptance process. The research shows that currently,

late shipments are often still tried to be build up for the planned flight. It is found that 13% of these shipments

do eventually not depart on the planned flight. The research concludes that the design of the Late Show process

should include a check on whether the shipment was delivered on time, before acceptance of the shipment.

By only accepting the shipment once it is decided that the planned flight is achievable or when it is rebooked

to another flight, it is assured that the Late Show will be on time at the build-up buffer for the booked flight.

1 INTRODUCTION

The analysis of airport operations is of great

importance to improve the efficiency and quality of

the processes (Blonk, 2017; Henriksson & Petersson,

2019). KLM Cargo found that export shipments

arriving late at their freight building at Schiphol

Airport (SPL) is a trigger to deviations in the standard

process of accepting shipments from forwarders. Late

shipments are defined as shipments that are unloaded

from the truck after the latest acceptance time and

before flight departure. These shipments are called

“Late Shows”. In order to create more time for the

ground processes resulting in a reduced chance of

shipments missing their flight, KLM Cargo

implemented two changes to the acceptance process

on January 11, 2021. First, the Freight on Hand

(FOH) moment is moved from the Documentation

station to the warehouse. Thus, the moment of

acceptance of the shipment is no longer when the

driver reports at the Documentation station, but when

the shipment is unloaded and available in the

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7943-3869

warehouse. Second, the latest time before flight

departure that shipments delivered by forwarders are

accepted, the Latest Acceptance Time (LAT), is

increased. The new LAT’s differ per product type.

Currently, there is no standard process for

shipments arriving late, meaning they are being

handled ad-hoc. Therefore, it is not possible to plan

these events, causing the process to be less

predictable, which negatively influences the

operational excellence of the process. In addition,

shipments arriving on time is currently not a criterion

for acceptance. However, when the shipments are

accepted, they should be able to catch the flight on

which they are booked, or the quality of the process

deteriorates. This can be explained by the definition

of “quality” and the definitions of two messages in

the standard acceptance process. This research

considers the definition of Slack, Brandon-Jones, &

Johnston (2016), who define quality as “consistent

conformance to customer expectations” (p. 573).

Further, IATA defines two messages, or status events,

in the acceptance process. IATA mentions that after

van Rooden, S., Zuniga, C., Krol, B. and Olivares-Benitez, E.

An Analysis and Design for the Repair Process of Late Show Shipments in the Export Cargo Process at SPL HUB.

DOI: 10.5220/0010797500003117

In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Operations Research and Enterprise Systems (ICORES 2022), pages 123-130

ISBN: 978-989-758-548-7; ISSN: 2184-4372

123

the truck is unloaded, the “Freight on Hand” message

is sent. This message indicates, “The consignment is

on hand on this date at this location pending ‘ready

for carriage’ determination.” (IATA, 2019, p. 1).

Then, after the necessary checks for safe and secure

carriage are conducted and the shipment information

is validated against the booking, the “Received from

Shipper” (RCS) message is sent. This message

indicates, “The consignment has been physically

received from the shipper or the shipper’s agent and

is considered by the carrier as ready for carriage on

this date and this location.” (IATA, 2019, p. 1).

Considering these definitions of IATA, it is important

to understand the difference between the acceptance

of shipments in terms of receipt in the warehouse

(FOH) and the acceptance of shipments as ready for

carriage (RCS). Further, it can be understood from

these definitions that a shipment should depart on the

booked flight at the moment of acceptance (RCS).

Whether the shipment departed on the flight on which

it was booked at acceptance is indicated by the DEP-

The objective of this research is to design the

collaborative operational process for repair of the

Late Shows in the export acceptance process of KLM

Cargo at SPL. This should result in a DEP-R

improvement of 0.5% and 98% of the shipments

should be delivered on time at the buffer for buildup.

The main research question is formulated as: How

can the process of export CARGO acceptance be

designed in such a way that shipments will be on time

at the buffer for buildup for the booked flight?

The research is focused on the acceptance of

shipments delivered to freight building 3. Further, the

research is conducted before and during the

implementation phase of the Late Show process for

the first product types.

2 METHODOLOGY

The research is approached using a combination of

both quantitative and qualitative methods. First, a

data analysis (desk research) is conducted using

quantitative methods to identify the characteristics of

the Late Shows. This data is collected using two data

sources. One of these sources is the leading source for

the analysis and the other is used as backup and to

validate the data collected from the first source. The

data is exported into Excel-sheets, after which it is

analyzed using pivot tables, graphs and other

(statistical) functions. The data analysis exists of a

statistical analysis into the predictability of the

number of Late Shows and total shipments and more

detailed analyses into the characteristics of the Late

Shows. The statistical analysis is conducted on four

levels: the number of shipments per month, per week,

per day of the week and per day. On each of these

levels, the number of shipments during the analyzed

Figure 1: General acceptance process at KLM Cargo SPL.

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period of January, February and March 2021 is

plotted in boxplots. This figure presents the

distribution of the data points (number of shipments),

giving information such as the mean, median,

minimum, and maximum value in the data set. For the

number of Late Shows, another level is analyzed,

presenting an overview of the Late Shows during

each hour of the day.

In the second phase of the research, it was tried to

understand first the current (ad-hoc) handling of the

late shipments. The data used to map this current

process is collected using interviews with the

stakeholders of the process (field research). During

these interviews, the new Late Show process, that

already had been tested, was also discussed with the

stakeholders. They were asked about their opinion on

the new Late Show process as well as already

considered possible improvements for the process, as

identified during process test evaluations. A

representative (or sometimes two) of each involved

department is selected for the interview, chosen

because of their expertise on the individual process

steps of their department and because they were

already involved in the Late Show project via earlier

process tests. Based on the recordings and notes, the

interviews were transcribed and encoded. In order to

present the current Late Shipment process and the

design of the new Late Show process, the data

collected for both designs is merged and processed

into Swimlane diagrams using Lucidchart tooling.

According to White (2004), Swimlanes have the

ability to represent different functional

responsibilities. Further, Swimlanes are part of the

Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN)

technique, which scores best in the research of

Recker, Rosemann, Indulska, & Green (2009) on the

degree of completeness for the system with the

features of the one analyzed in this work.

Figure 2: Current Late Shipment process diagram.

An Analysis and Design for the Repair Process of Late Show Shipments in the Export Cargo Process at SPL HUB

125

3 RESULTS

In this section, first is described the Current process.

Next, the Data Analysis is presented. After that, the

New process designed is shown. Finally, the

comparison of the results obtained to the objective is

explained.

3.1 Current Process

In the acceptance process of KLM Cargo at SPL, the

FOH message is generated after the shipment is

unloaded from the truck and certain acceptance

checks are conducted. In case the shipment does not

require any further checks, a ride is generated by the

Warehouse Management System (WMS) for the

shipment from the receiving area to either the storage

facility or the buildup buffer (B&B). At the buildup

buffer, the shipments are made ready for

transportation. The moment the shipment is delivered

at the right location, the RCS message will be sent,

which means the shipment is accepted and considered

ready for carriage. This process can be seen in Figure

1.

It is found that this standard acceptance process is

also followed when the shipment is delivered late.

Thus, the late shipment is always accepted (RCS

message). Further, it is experienced that currently late

shipments are often still transported to the buildup

buffer, while the WMS gives the instruction to drive

late shipments to the storage. The Flight Planners are

responsible for regularly checking the status of

shipments and whether the shipments on their

respective flights are already delivered to the freight

building. However, in practice it is seen that,

especially when these flights are departing close after

each other, the Planner does not have time to

continuously check this for each flight. The Planner

will screen at least three hours before the flight

departs, which is the moment that the buildup buffer

closes, whether the shipments are at that location.

Because the late shipments are often still transported

to the buildup buffer and because the Planner does not

always immediately know that a shipment is

delivered late, it will often be tried to build up the

shipment, even though there is sometimes not much

time left. Besides, due to a fault in the WMS, in case

a Planner decides to offload a shipment from the

planned flight because it is late, the shipment can still

be scanned and build up by the buildup employees.

Because of this, the Planners are reluctant with

rebooking and offloading shipments, and it is often

tried to build up a late shipment on the planned flight.

However, in case it was eventually not possible for

the buildup employees to build up the late shipment

on the planned flight, the shipment is left on the

buildup buffer and must be rebooked. This process

can be seen in Figure 2.

3.2 Data Analysis

From the statistical analysis on the total number of

shipments and the number of Late Shows, it is seen

that there are on average 282 shipments and 11 Late

Figure 3: Boxplot number of Late Shows per day for each day of the week (January, February & March combined).

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Shows delivered per day in the combined first three

months of 2021. Figure 3 and Tables 1 and 2 show

that this number is highest on Monday, Tuesday, and

Friday with 14 Late Shows. Compared to the other

days of the week, the number of Late Shows per day

on Sunday is relatively low, with on average 3 Late

Shows. Further, on Tuesday, Friday and Saturday are

the largest deviations in the number of Late Shows

per day with a standard deviation of 7 or 8 Late

Shows. In the distribution of the total number of

shipments per day of the week, it is seen as well, that

Friday and Sunday are the busiest and least busy day

respectively. Further, on Friday and Saturday, the

number of total shipments is hard to predict, as the

standard deviation is largest on these days as well.

Continuing with the more detailed analyses on the

characteristics of the Late Shows, it is calculated that

73% of the Late Shows are between 1 and 120

minutes late and almost 49% of the Late Shows have

a delay between 1 and 60 minutes. Applying the

80/20 rule, the data analysis shows that 80% of the

Late Shows have a delay between 1 and 152 minutes.

Next, a categorization of the Late Shows based on

the product type shows that the top 3 products are

responsible for more than 67% of the total number of

Late Shows. Individually, product types 1, 2 and 3

represent 30%, 26% and 11% respectively. Another

product type follows shortly after product type 3

based on the number of Late Shows. However, this

product is generally delivered to freight building 1,

while this research is focused on freight building 3.

The eleven other product types represent small

numbers of Late Shows compared to the already

mentioned products.

Table 1: Data on number of Late Shows per day for each

day of the week.

Day

Data points

Total observations

180

T 13 178

W 13 152

Th 12 138

F 13 179

Sa 13 130

Su 13 38

Table 2: Statistics on number of Late Shows per day for

each day of the week.

Day

Mean

Med

Min

Max

Std Dev

13.9

5.9

T 13.7 11 1 31 8.1

W 11.7 12 5 19 4.3

Th 11.5 10 5 21 4.7

F 13.8 11 2 31 7.6

Sa 10 7 1 25 7.2

Su 2.9 3 1 6 1.5

Finally, an analysis on the DEP-R shows that 13%

of the Late Shows were rebooked after the RCS

Figure 4: General acceptance process of KLM Cargo at SPL including adjustments for Late Show process.

An Analysis and Design for the Repair Process of Late Show Shipments in the Export Cargo Process at SPL HUB

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message was sent, indicating that these shipments did

not depart on the planned flight at RCS. As explained

in the introduction, the customer expectations are not

met for these Late Shows, which deteriorates the

quality of the process. It is assumed that this

percentage is caused by the late delivery of the

forwarder.

3.3 New Process

Figure 4 presents the adjusted acceptance process

considering the new Late Show process. This process

is applicable for all product types. The red highlighted

objects in figure 4 present the changes of the process

compared to the diagram in figure 1. As can be seen

in figure 4, it is checked in this new process whether

the shipment is late, after the FOH message is

generated. In case the shipment is late, different sub-

processes follow based on the type of product.

Because of the different characteristics of each

product type, the Late Show process is not applicable

to all products. Currently, the earlier mentioned

product types 1 and 3 are considered for the Late

Show process because of their high number of Late

Shows and thus the large operational impact. In

addition, they have a similar operational process in

the warehouse. The product with the second largest

number of Late Shows (product type 2), has a

different operational process in the warehouse,

because of certain storage requirements, which means

this product type requires a different Late Show

process. The same applies to the other products.

Besides, many of the other product types represent

small numbers of Late Shows, which means the high

effort it requires to include these products in the Late

Show process results in a marginal effect on the

operation.

The Late Show process designed in this research

is specifically for product types 1 and 3. These

product types follow the extra steps presented in

figure 5 because of the Late Show process. For

product types 1 and 3, a message is sent to the WMS

indicating the shipment is late. Based on this

message, the WMS automatically blocks the

shipment with the Late Show block. This block

triggers the standard Late Show process, which is

designed in figure 6.

Because of the Late Show block, the Late Show

will not be driven to the buildup buffer or the storage,

as a ride is generated in the WMS to the FOH-buffer.

This FOH-buffer is currently located in the receiving

area of the warehouse. With the Late Show in the

FOH-buffer, time is taken for the decision-making

process. The Planner checks for the Late Show in

correspondence with the operation on whether the

planned flight is still operationally achievable in the

remaining time before flight departure. In case the

Planner decides this is possible, he removes the Late

Show block in the WMS, which generates a new ride

from the FOH-buffer to the buildup buffer or the

storage facility. In case the Planner decides it is not

desirable to let the Late Show depart on the planned

flight, the Late Show first has to be rebooked, after

which the Late Show block is removed, and the

shipment is transported to the buildup buffer or the

storage facility. When the Late Show arrives at this

location, the RCS message is triggered.

3.4 Objectives

As mentioned in the introduction, there are two

objectives set by KLM Cargo for this project. The

design of the Late Show process should result in a

DEP-R improvement of 0.5% and 98% of the

shipments should be delivered on time at the buffer

for buildup.

Starting with the first objective, considering the

Late Show process designed in this research, the Late

Shows should no longer be rebooked after the RCS

message is sent. This results in an improvement of the

DEP-R. Considering the earlier mentioned 13% of the

Late Shows, the DEP-R should be improved with

0.51%. This expected improvement meets the

objective of 0.5% almost exactly. However, this

Figure 5: Late Show process steps in acceptance process (product types 1 & 3).

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result assumes all product types, while it was

concluded earlier that the Late Show process is not

applicable to all products. When only the product

types 1 and 3 are considered, the DEP-R is improved

with 0.33%. In this case, the objective is not met, but

there is still a significant improvement. Finally, a

calculation can be made which includes product type

2, as this product represents a large part of the total

number of Late Shows. With the product types 1, 2

and 3, the DEP-R is improved with 0.37%. This

means that the objective of a DEP-R improvement of

0.5% is still not met.

Regarding the second objective, the Late Shows

will only be transported to the buildup buffer in the

designed Late Show process when it is possible to

build up the shipment for the planned flight. Thus,

when the buildup buffer is closed, the Late Shows

will not be delivered to the buffer. This results in an

improvement of the percentage of shipments that are

on time at the buildup buffer. It is calculated that in

all earlier described scenarios, the objective to have

98% of the shipments on time at the buildup buffer is

met. Thus, this objective is already met with the Late

Show process designed in this research (only

considering product type 1 and 3), with an expected

improvement of 0.38%.

3.5 Limitations

During the course of the research, there have been

discovered a couple of bugs and other differences

between the two data sources used for the data

analysis. It was found that there were significant

differences between the numbers of Late Shows

reported by the two sources. Therefore, it was hard to

make a good validation of the results of the data

analysis in this research. It was decided to continue

the data analysis using the appointed leading data

source, instead of waiting for the two sources to show

similar values. Therefore, the results of this research

could deviate slightly after the identified issues have

been solved and a proper comparison between the two

sources is made. However, the data analysis in this

research does provide an indication that is useful for

future decisions concerning the Late Show process.

Figure 6: Late Show process diagram (for product types 1 & 3).

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129

The second data source is used as back-up in case

information was not available in the leading data

source. Further, it must be considered that the data

analysis does not make a distinction between freight

building 1 and 3, as this is not possible in the leading

data source. However, the designed process is

focused on freight building 3.

4 CONCLUSIONS

This research found that without a Late Show process,

there is no difference in the physical handling of a

shipment in the acceptance process of KLM Cargo in

case the shipment is delivered late. This means that

the shipment is always accepted, and the Received

from Shipper (RCS) message is always sent,

indicating the carrier considers the shipment as ready

for carriage. As a result, it is often tried to still build

up a late shipment and let it depart on the planned

flight, even though there is sometimes not much time

left for this process. This research shows that 13% of

the Late Shows do not depart on the planned flight at

RCS meaning the commitment to the customer is not

met, which deteriorates the quality of the process.

Based on this research, it is concluded that the

design of a standard Late Show process must consider

specific Late Show characteristics. It is important to

consider the product types requiring a different design

because of specific operational processes in the

warehouse. Further, the design of the process should

include a check on whether the shipment was

delivered on time, before acceptance of the shipment

and thus the sending of the RCS message. Then, in

case the shipment is late, it should be checked

whether the planned flight is still operationally

achievable. When this is not possible, the Late Show

first has to be rebooked to another flight before the

RCS message is sent. By following this decision-

making process while the shipment is stored in the

FOH-buffer located in the receiving area of the

warehouse, and thus before the shipment is driven to

the buildup buffer, it is assured that the Late Show

will be on time at the buildup buffer for the booked

flight.

The research recommends to also include at least

the product with the second largest number of Late

Shows in the Late Show policy, as this product also

has a large operational impact caused by the Late

Shows. This means further research must be

conducted into mainly the storage requirements of

this product, and how a Late Show process for this

product should look like. Further, it is recommended

to further research the predictability of the Late

Shows in more detail, as this research shows the

number of Late Shows is currently difficult to predict.

A more detailed analysis can lead to even better

insights into the characteristics of the Late Shows and

can help to decide on future improvements for the

process. In addition, it is recommended to validate the

data from the two data sources used in this research,

after the identified issues that caused the differences

between the two sources are solved

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research is conducted in the context of a

graduation internship for the study Aviation

Operations at the Amsterdam University of Applied

Sciences at the request of internship company KLM

Cargo.

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