Monitoring cargo flights in real time: Hellmann develops new tracking tool SmartAir!

Hellmann Worldwide Logistics, a full-service provider with worldwide operations, is launching SmartAir!, a new tracking tool for the real-time tracking of air freight shipments. Together with the Bonn-based start-up BlueBox Systems, Hellmann developed a web-based platform, which provides customers with comprehensive information about their air freight shipments at a glance, regardless of airline, route, or type of shipment.

With this innovation, Hellmann closes a gap in the live tracking of transports and takes a pioneering role in the logistics industry in times of ever more closely synchronized flows of goods in global supply chains.

Based on GPS coordinates, SmartAir! provides information on all stopovers and loading times for live tracking of shipments. In addition, the system offers numerous analysis options for the performance of individual airlines, routes, and airports: Which departure airport has the fewest delays? Which airlines deliver most reliably? This information enables quick and easy evaluation of providers and routes, thus creating the prerequisites for optimizing supply chain management.

Hellmann, therefore, completes its product range for shipment tracking and can now offer a customized tracking solution for every mode of transport: Smart Ocean for sea freight, SmartAir! for air freight, and the universally applicable Smart Visibility trackers. These records, in addition to tracking data, extensive information on humidity, temperature, the incidence of light, vibration, and door opening, thus enabling detailed transport control of shipments.

"SmartAir! is a real game-changer in the tracking of airfreight shipments, which has not been available on the market in this way before. In times of digitalization and ever-smaller time windows for decisions, quickly available real-time data within global supply chains are becoming increasingly important. This will also be of particular relevance in the upcoming distribution of Covid-19 vaccines," says Henning Pottharst, Product Manager Smart Visibility, Hellmann Worldwide Logistics.