Jettainer and the University of Cologne are conducting a live test on management software for big data in the movement of unit load devices (ULD) that they have jointly developed.

They says this is designed to illustrate how well the software can support the company’s controllers by offering them assistance in making decisions as a result of its analysis of large volumes of data.

Jettainer says the software has undergone a huge amount of change since the start of its development in 2013 as a result of the analysis of the movement data of ULDs and feedback from the controllers.

The software is now able to make suggestions for management procedures on its own, but employees still always make the final decisions, but Jettainer says staff now have a system at their side, which offers live assistance in making decisions, for example, by searching for alternative routes and scheduling scenarios within a few seconds.

The live test, which has just been launched, covers several major airline customers and this will allow further valuable conclusions and improvements to the software.

In the future, Jettainer says other packages like weather data, holiday periods or even information on events will be incorporated within the system. This will then enable it to take into account any envisaged increase in the need for ULDs in conjunction with a major event.

This it explains will create further opportunities for preventing both empty flights and excess capacity. As the decisions made by the controllers are also fed into the system, the software will become more and more intelligent over time.

Jettainer managing director, Carsten Hernig says: “We want to provide our controllers with the best possible support for their work. To a certain extent, the management processes form the core element in our work. We’re deliberately including elaborate innovations here, because any improvements, which we can achieve in this area, benefit both us and our customers directly.”

Six research staff at the University of Cologne and eight employees from Jettainer are working on the research project, which is being funded by Jettainer.

Once the live test has been concluded, a decision about the next steps will be made at the end of the year.