A Simulation Analysis of the Co-loading Strategy in the Air Freight Process

Nowadays, volatile demand of air freight market led by supply chain disruptions have become commonplace, necessitating a new management strategy to address the challenges. A lateral sharing strategy, based on the co-loading policy, is proposed for air cargo consolidation among different freight forwarders to improve resilience and sustainability. The lateral sharing strategy also helps improve flights loading utilization, reduce overall transport costs, and enhance the cooperation among freight forwarders. This study examines the effectiveness of this strategy through simulation modelling on FlexSim. The cost differences with and without the proposed strategy are examined, where the ratios of the network throughput and aircraft capacity are varying. Overall, this work helps understand the conditions and benefits when deploying the proposed strategy.;