Digitalization has had a huge impact in my field of work, logistics. I work in an international logistics company, and I specialize in air logistics.
I can see the effect of digitalization in my work every day. The tools that I use have changed greatly during the past years, and this change has made the work process a lot more efficient. Another thing that digitalization has changed is the way I communicate, both internally and externally. In the past, the main communication channel with my colleagues was email. This changed a lot during the recent past. Many new communications channels have been introduced, such as online chat and video conferencing. This has made the communication more instant and personal, which has made working more efficient. With the clients, the main communication channel is still email, but during the recent years, the communication by email has decreased a lot. Many customers have started using electronic data interchange systems (EDI), which has decreased the need for emails. The EDI system is a great example on how digitalization has changed the logistics industry. Thanks to the EDI system, work resources can be allocated to different tasks, as the customers can book shipments directly from their systems via EDI messages, and there is no need for our company to respond by email to the booking requests.
Another big digital advancement in the air logistics industry is e-freight. In the past, all the shipments had to have physical shipping documents, called air waybill (AWB). This physical document has been replaced by an e-AWB. The e-AWB uses SITA messaging system to send the shipments details to all the involved parties, such as the carrier airline, the customs, and the consignee. By using e-AWBs, the need to manually capture shipment data in different systems can be omitted. This fastens the shipment handling process and also reduces errors in the shipment data that can come from manual data capture. Currently, about 70% of the shipments use e-AWB system.
In the future, there will be a new e-freight system, called One record. This new system will include all the benefits of the previous e-freight system and also introduce additional benefits. One major advance of the One record system is that the shipment data is transparently exchanged with all the shipment parties. The system creates a single record view of the shipment, which is then available to all the shipment stakeholders.
I believe that digitalization has already changed life and work, and the change will continue in the future. More and more work has been automated, lowering the need for human workforce in many tasks. Some other tasks have changed so that the task is easier for humans. I believe that artificial intelligence will change work for many persons, and it might reduce the need for human workers in the future. I am afraid that this might create many problems, as there is less work. On the other hand, digitalization has also created many possibilities. For instance, a lot of IT work is now done in countries such as India and Bangladesh. Thanks to website such as upwork.com, many people in those aforementioned countries are now able to work as IT workers, and this generates income for persons who might have done previously only manual labor.
GDPR
The general data protection regulation has had many effects on my personal life. For instance, it has strengthened my privacy rights on many websites I use daily. Many websites gather a lot less of my personal information after the GDPR has been put to effect. I believe that this is a positive aspect of the GDPR because I don’t trust some of the websites that I use to save the data securely. Some sites might also sell my personal data to advertisers. So, with GDPR, these negative aspects are reduced. A negative aspect of GDPR regulation is the EU cookie policy. According to this policy, every website should ask the user for consent to use cookies. In my opinion, this policy makes using many websites annoying. The user has to consent every time the go to a new website, and this is quite time consuming many times. I understand what the policy tries to achieve, but the way it has been implemented is not quite efficient. I believe that some new way should be investigated in how to implement the cookie policy.
Self-evaluation
I have learned a lot about digitalization during this assignment. There were already some things that I knew about, for instance the e-freight system in air cargo. I have learned more about the One record e-freight system and how it will be used in the air logistics industry. Previously I also didn’t know that IT work can be done on a freelance basis and that the IT professional can sell their work on sites such as upwork.com. I have also found more information on how digitalization might change the future of work and how it might change or even remove some workplaces
As I was looking for information about GDPR, I started to understand it better and understood how multifaceted the regulation is and how many different aspects it has. I believe that there is much more for me to learn about it and how it has been implemented in my industry.