Cargo 2000 has appointed Thorsten Lafleur as Technical Director with responsibility for the global development, maintenance, and industry-wide adoption of the overall business process and standards of the Cargo 2000 project.
He will officially take up this new post on September 1st, 2009, based in Miami, Florida at the CNS/IATA office for the Americas. Cargo 2000 (C2K) is a self-funded, non-profit interest group sponsored by the International Air Transportation Association (IATA).
Thorsten Lafleur has over 16 years of extensive experience in different areas of the air cargo industry. He started his career at Lufthansa German Airlines/Lufthansa Cargo AG, where he held various management positions in Revenue Accounting, IT, Quality Management/Business Excellence and Product Management, including a foreign assignment in Atlanta, USA. He is currently responsible for Lufthansa Cargo's service and product offer for the transportation of classic perishables and dangerous goods. He is also a member of Lufthansa Cargo's Environmental Improvement Team.
'I am very pleased that Thorsten Lafleur will take up the position of Technical Director,' stated Mick Fountain, Chairman of the C2K'Executive Board. 'With his background in airline product management, quality and change management as well as information technology systems and implementations, he brings the ideal set of skills to this challenging position.'
Cargo 2000 is a group of some 60 major airlines, freight forwarders, ground handlers, trucking companies and IT providers. Its members are implementing re-engineered air cargo transportation processes from shipper to consignee using Cargo's 2000's 'Master Operating Plan'. This sits at the heart of an industry-wide process control and reporting system that drives data management and corrective action systems. By more than halving the number of individual processes in the air cargo supply chain to just 19, Cargo 2000 is less labor intensive and improves the process for managing shipments in a paperless environment. It substantially reduces time spent managing irregularities, such as service failures, cuts the time required for manual track and trace procedures and leads to a reduction in service recovery costs.
The program is being implemented in three distinct phases. Phase 1 manages Airport-to-Airport movements - shipment planning & tracking at Master air waybill level. Once a booking is made, a plan is automatically created with a series of checkpoints against which the transportation of every air cargo shipment is managed and measured. This enables the system to alert Cargo 2000 members to any exceptions to the plan, allowing them to respond pro-actively to fulfill their customers' expectations. Phase 2 is responsible for shipment planning and tracking at House air waybill level and provides interactive monitoring of the door-to-door movement while the third phase manages shipment planning and tracking at individual piece level plus document tracking.
Identified as a key pillar of IATA's e-freight program and with its membership at an all-time high, Cargo 2000 publishes the quality standards of its airline and forwarder members each month on its website.
