An Analysis and Design for the Repair Process of Late Show Shipments in the Export Cargo Process at SPL HUB Sjoerd van Rooden 1 , Catya Zuniga 1 , Bart Krol 2 and Elias Olivares-Benitez 3 a 1 Faculty of Technology, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Weesperzijde 190, Amsterdam, The Netherlands 2 KLM Cargo, Schiphol, The Netherlands 3 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 a 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 Copyright c  2022 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved 123