Lufthansa Cargo has started IATA Proof of Concept for eDGD through the Dakosy community collaboration platform – as it moves towards paperless dangerous goods handling.
eDGD is the digital approach to manage the IATA Dangerous Goods Declaration (DGD). It is a major step towards paperless air cargo handling, and enables the shipper, forwarder and carrier to manage the transportation of dangerous goods without paper documentation.
Lufthansa Cargo is a major driver of the standardization of eDGD. Together with Air France, Swiss WorldCargo and Cargologic and facilitated by IATA, the eDGD standard has been set up and aligned on since early 2017.
eDGD is a project driven by the industry. Digitizsng the DGD requires cooperation of stakeholders including the shipper, forwarder, carrier, GHA and third party providers. Their collaboration to a data platform is essential to ensure compliance and benefits for all partners.
The project has now entered the Proof of Concept phase with implementations in Frankfurt, Paris and Zürich. In Frankfurt, the platform operator Dakosy implemented an eDGD platform, ‘Infr8-eDGD’, as dangerous goods collaboration platform for shipper and forwarder in close collaboration with Lufthansa Cargo. This platform will be the basis for the eDGD process supported by Lufthansa Cargo.
eDGD is based on a modern data sharing approach using supply chain community platforms and is compliant to the current IATA Dangerous Goods Regulations. eDGD brings an improved collaboration between all stakeholders of the supply chain with more transparency and traceability. Clearly defined data governance and increased data quality along the dangerous goods supply chain will improve the process efficiency and reduce errors and delays.
Vice president of global handling, Dr. Jan-Wilhelm Breithaupt said: “eDGD is one important component of Lufthansa Cargos digitization strategy to provide a holistic digital environment for our customers. Only when all stakeholders of the supply chain find benefits in the solution, digitization will be successful on such a large scale. This was taken into account for the eDGD standard, and we´re happy perform the Pilot project with industry partners in our hub in Frankfurt.”
