4th Party Cyber Logistics for Air Cargo

Book excerpt: 4th Party Cyber Logistics For Air Cargo is a technical discussion for researchers and practitioners to understand the issues, models, and future directions of air cargo logistics in the cyber era. This book introduces the many aspects of planning and control of air cargo logistics processes in an e-Business environment. The authors approach this subject matter from the perspective of the logistics service providers. There is tremendous potential of achieving industry-wide collaboration between agents of the air cargo industry via an e-Business community platform. At the same time, there are many intellectually challenging problems regarding the architecture, ownership, decision support environment, and knowledge management of such an e-Business platform. The authors provide an evolutionary view to conceptualize the developments of websites where e-Commerce activities and e-Business activities co-exist. Four Web eras are detailed, providing an impetus for the development of frameworks of an e-Business platform for air cargo logistics, or e-Platform. The conceptual framework captures the new elements in cyber logistics and what the framework can do for the industry.