Singapore’s Changi Airport is continuing to develop and refine its capabilities when it comes to handling pharmaceutical shipments, and is taking advantage of its membership of Pharma.Aero, the global association founded by Brussels and Miami Airports which aims to improve the quality of pharmaceutical handling.

In addition to being a member of Pharma.Aero, in October 2017 Changi also formalized Pharma@Changi, a community of companies representing the various parts of the air cargo supply chain that have achieved the International Air Transport Association’s Center of Excellence for Independent Validators in Pharmaceutical Logistics certification.

“I think a lot has been achieved collectively since a year ago,” said Jaisey Yip, associate general manager of cargo and logistics development at Changi Airport Group, in an interview during The International Air Cargo Association’s biennial Air Cargo Forum. “For instance, we’ve since made our first foray into co-exhibiting at events as a consortium to really promote Singapore’s pharma handling capabilities. Secondly, we’ve been having regular dialogue as a team and there are a couple of things that we’re working on.”

She pointed to the synergy between the airport’s involvement in Pharma@Changi and Pharma.Aero, giving as an example Pharma.Aero’s digitization project, which Changi will apply to and pilot with some of the members of Pharma@Changi.

“The aim of this particular project is to offer more visibility to shippers on the location and integrity of their shipments but the platform requires collaboration across the entire air supply chain,” Yip said. “The first phase involving a proof of concept has been completed and we shared a technical paper with Pharma.Aero members. The next step is to convert that into a white paper which we can share with the broader industry.”

The demo provided by the group’s IT provider has now been validated across major shippers like Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, which means that Pharma.Aero can start prototyping with real-time data on trade lanes such as Brussels-Singapore, Brussels-Hong Kong and Brussels-Mumbai. If it is proven successful and validated, then we’ll look into commercialization.

“The most difficult part of this project wasn’t about the technology,” said Yip. “It was about how to get the entire community to collaborate and share data. Each of the stakeholders has some form of data. It’s just that we’re not sharing that information to give one single truth to the shippers. The key objective is to get one common data sharing platform.”

In order to assure data owners that the data is immutable and only accessible to those with whom they want to share it, Pharma.Aero is exploring the use of blockchain technology in the system. Another thing is data accessibility. We need to give comfort to every data owner that they’re sharing it only with whomever they want to see it. So the owner still retains control.

“We’re quite fortunate in that all the Pharma.Aero members are willing to share their data,” said Yip. “We all have the common vision of giving more visibility to the shippers and increasing the reliability of pharma transportation by air.”

The digitization project is just one of several that Pharma.Aero has been working on. Another group has completed an airport-airside benchmark study, in which all airport members shared their current best practices, SOPs and equipment used on the tarmac to ensure an unbroken chain

“This project was not meant to decide what the best solution is,” Yip said. “There is no best solution for any airport because it’s not one size fits all. Every airport has different climatic conditions, different challenges and different nuances. It’s really a glossary of what other airports are doing and we publish it in a technical white paper as a benchmarking reference.”

Pharma.Aero has also completed a CEIV revalidation project, in which the group revalidated the processes outlined in IATA’s CEIV checklist to see whether they meet the shippers’ own audit requirements.

“The main aim of this is to reduce the number and frequency of audits that they have to do,” said Yip. “If they believe that the checklist meets all their requirements, then there’s no need for yearly audit exercises.”

According to Yip, Pharma.Aero is currently working on three other new projects, in addition to the digitization upgrade. One of them concerns pharma cargo security, which remains a large concern for shippers.

“The thing is that when you look at the different certifications out there, they all have their own security chapters but they might not be aligned,” she said. “This project tries to harmonize all the security standards out there and to see whether there are gaps that the industry could plug.”

Another project tries to improve the e-learning process for those who are involved in the day-to-day operations of handling pharma cargo.

“When we talk about IATA pharma training, usually the companies send people at the supervisory level,” said Yip. “When they go back, certain things might get lost in translation and don’t get down to the ground level. What we hope to do with IATA is to simplify the CEIV Pharma training to something that is more bite-sized for the ground-level staff.”

Lastly, Pharma.Aero is hoping to be able to publish multi-disciplinary pharma-related articles and white papers through the association’s own platform to share with all nodes of the air cargo industry at large.

Pharma.Aero is planning to complete these projects in the next 12 months, after which its members will come up with new ideas for further areas to work on.

“While we sometimes do bring in consultants to help us with the projects, we don’t really hire people to do the job for us because we are the ones who moot ideas and get our hands dirty,” Yip said. “All our members are very hard-working people and very committed to the same mission – that’s what I like about this association.”

By Jeffrey Lee

Asia Cargo News | Toronto