With employee turnover affecting the consistency of the ground handling workforce, Swissport International is attempting to address the issue analytically.

Nils Pries Knudsen, Chief Commercial Officer of the Zurich-based company, spoke with Ground Support Worldwide this spring at the IATA Ground Handling Conference in Doha, Qatar. He says with nearly 70,000 people employed, globally, Swissport is addressing the workforce issue from as many different angles as possible.

“Labor is becoming a scarce commodity, and we have to overcome that,” Knudsen says. “There are various ways of doing it.”

With that, Swissport has assembled an “Innovation Team.”

“We have people who are only dealing with innovation within our business – be it on the ramp, be it in front of the passengers, be it in the cargo warehouse. Wherever we have labor involved, we are trying to see if we can find ways to automate and to use technology.”

Although it may take time to see results, Swissport officials are confident in this investment of resources.

Knudsen believes that brand new technology and state-of-the-art equipment isn’t necessary to improve operations. Rather, he feels current opportunities can, in many cases, be utilized more effectively.

“We don’t need a lot of new invention taking place. It’s probably more a matter of using existing ideas, existing technology, that is already there and apply it to our industry,” Knudsen says. “Most of the time, we come across the fact that data is the most important source. If we have the data, we can use it to make life easier for our customers.”

The Swissport Innovation Team has begun working with Plug and Play, a startup company headquartered in Silicon Valley.

“We try and test what could be interesting in lab stations – we have 315 stations, globally. We typically then select from our stations what could be potentially interesting for a specific thing, and test it (in the field) to see if it makes sense for us.”

Knudsen says Swissport had not previously prioritized data collection and analysis until it became necessary. Now, he believes the company will prosper with its focus on data.

Swissport, which also announced a long-term cargo warehousing partnership with Fraport in Frankfurt, Germany, and the acquisition of Aerocare in Australia leading up the IGHC, finds IATA’s ground handling event to be an opportunity to share new ideas with customers and collect feedback.

“The most important thing is we can really catch up, generally, on what’s going on in the industry by talking to customers and attending group sessions,” Knudsen concludes.