How do you quantify the benefits people had when switching from listening to the radio to watching the tv?

Macy’s in Manhattan is drastically dwarfed by the combo of Amazon eBay and PayPal. How do you measure this kind of shopping, payment and even behavior transformation?

Every month through ePic, about 1.8 million dollars of ISC are paid online, which would mean 36,000 paper checks that would otherwise be processed at the window and the back office. How much is the cost saving?

Hint: 36000×10*60×12*2080 = 34.6 FTE/Year just as one way to look at it.

How about cost savings for the forwarders, customs brokers, trucking companies. Think about the most irritable messenger service fee or courier fee saved, which is $15 per paper check in the US.

It’s the paradigm shift that makes the attempt to measure and fathom the cost saving futile and meaningless.

The great pyramids or Great Walls have always captured man’s imagination.

It is the size or the mere massiveness that makes it imposing and self-evident. We measure ourselves against it and feel overwhelmed.

Overwhelmingly massive is exactly everything ePic is and does, in terms of everything.

ePic is changing the industry!

AWB,i.e. FWB, is a legal contract between airlines and its shipping agent.

Dim & wgt task, mostly performed by warehouse after fact, is evidential but may not be consequential.

When weight discrepancy exceeds the threshold, instead of overwriting the weight on the AWB, the best practice is that ground handler alerts the local sales people. One common device they use is CCA. It is basically an amendment that the local sales make the forwarder agree to and sign for. After CCA is obtained, airlines may require the shipper to reissue an AWB. This is an exception handling process mainly for the purpose of freightage, i.e. the revenue and accounting, not really operational matter.

Data should be captured (FWB process) by following the AWB tendered with cargo. So is RCS.

The discrepancy on piece count is more material than the weight, is a show stop, and therefore no RCS will be triggered.

For China Customs, the scope of export and import document examination includes trade docs, transport docs and customs docs. To go e-freight for them has been a constant challenge. But for whom is it not?

eAWB is a precursor to paperlessness indeed, but has to be followed immediately by a paper free process.

Buying printers to print eAWB is not just funny but is actually detrimental to the efreight in letter and spirit.

Unlike Ez pass where cars come to the toll booth, Cargo in different size, Shapes, colors, weights, packaging, etc do not come to us. We go to cargo. So we don’t need RFID. And we are not operating a grocery supermarket, so we don’t need bar codes.

Decimal precision is not what data quality is all about.

It is a great workshop! The e-thing rings loud and clear. Now need actions, more actions.

Going paperless is only a means of achieving the end of paper-free process which will lead to a completely e-freight future.

Any good system should be such that if you know the trade, you should be able to use it right away; in case you don’t know much about the trade, you should know the trade once you learn to use the system.

Made for cargo people by cargo people, ePic revolutionizes cargo management. Using the latest technology, ePic allows users to access information from anywhere, at any time. With ePic, cargo management moves from a time-consuming, frustrating, paper-based system to an intuitive, user-friendly automated system. By reducing human error, ePic users can spend the time doing what matters—interacting with clients to keep them satisfied. The customers get their shipments faster, and the cargo people have less paperwork. Stop chasing paper—switch to ePic today.

Day 1

Had a quick tour to Mxxx warehouse. Had a meeting with the GM and his agm about what we will do on 16th and process changes to expect – lower expectation but overdeliver stuff.

Took the team to dinner

Day 2

Training at Mxxxs while staging for tomorrow startup

Misc: BA may switch to Cargospot from BA80. ePic continues tomorrow.

People are happy that ePic is going to replace Hxxxs. I finally got a chance to see how Hxxxs works. Horrible is an understatement.

Warehouse team comprises of really energetic young people. Smartphone generation embraces ePic in no time.

Once again we are going to bury Hxxxs. Everybody is so relieved that we are ending Hxxxs and beginning a new era of ePic. Cessation of Hxxxs is an immediate winner left alone so many other benefits ePic will bring.

The ePic journey has already begun today. BA OZ bcl, and their respective iPad breakdowns all happened ahead of schedule.

The challenge remains how the process owner is going to stick to his gun to take and keep the ePic driven operation process.

Tomorrow we will be faced with assault by pickup drivers coming back from a long weekend.

Day 3 – Cutover Day

Startup day today.

ePic, warehouse and office, counter, back office, dock and warehouse floor, import and export workflow…oz hu Ba fi EK cv. Thank God they are all messaged. Paper v paperless, tradition and innovation, young generation for change v diehard fundamentalist…

The GM is so overwhelmed and exhausted. His weardown is more visible than Joe when LX started.

Thankfully ePic is way more advanced than the Hxxxs in all counts. The users liberated from Hxxxs will not allow the reversal to the Mxxxs day regardless their master wants or not. ePic will create opportunities for those who embrace changes to advance and advance fast.

Two operations combined into one as if two cultures are merging into one. On top of that, ePic as a unifying force is relentlessly blended into the mix.

What a fusion, a terrible beauty is born.

Day 4

For counters, we stop receiving practice of pre-dropped off checks. Some checks can cover multi awb’s multi airlines multi flights. Sounds familiar ? With ePic, no more. Pay online. DbShenker dropped $5000 to their prepaid account and happily pay online.

Mxxxs lost this war to us is exactly owing to their wrong system and the wrong practice that the wrong system caused. Everybody is looking for checks. When someone founded it, there is an uproar of congratulations. G’me a break.

The GM felt much better today. Warehouse side, young people convinced him. However he still yelling “I need three copies of awb. One for office one for security one for me”.

We had a good laugh last night with ray guido noel jerry mike at dinner,just to blow away the heat of the day.

Day 5

Although we overstay, we didn’t have much to do today. Either we trained them well or they learned fast.

Everything seems coming together. Honestly, it must be difficult with combo of two operations per se plus ePic instilling into the mix the new way of doing things. This implementation is not bad at all.

Going home sweet home in a few hours. Now with bitter sweetness in mind and heart,  I am finally facing a sleepless Seattle.

It’s raining again…///…///…///…

Three passions have governed our business: the love for our customers, the innovation of ground handling processes, and the pity for the suffering of those who work in the aviation industry.

Love for customers, first, assures we will have our business; love for customers, next, assures that we can keep our business; Love for customers, finally, assures that our business will last.

With equal passion we have sought innovation to transform the industry. We’ve literally inspected every element of cargo handling and successfully changed the way people do things from warehouse floor to decision maker.

Cargo handling is mundane. Pity always brings us back to earth. Grunts of pain reverberate in our heart. Co-workers buried under mountains of paperwork, simple routines complicated by plethora of regulatory constraints, and processes suddenly inoperable due to self-imposed limitations… We try to alleviate the pain, but we cannot always find a solution, and we too suffer. That is why one of our innovation objectives is keep employees happy as well.