The objective of our improvement project was to contribute to more fuel-efficient air transportation. As explained in this article, transportation by air comes with strong regulatory constraints, and there’s a need for careful stakeholder management. We nearly abandoned the project when the efforts we had asked people to make were not quantified in the primary metric that we used. The breakthrough was only achieved when together, with careful stakeholder management, we reduced “noise” signals in that primary metric to be able to “listen to the voice of the process.” It’s what we learned from this experience that we want to share with you, a wider community.

The carbon footprint—increasingly in the focus of the logistics industry

According to the Air Transport Action Group, greenhouse gas emissions from human activities in 2010 totalled 29 gigatonnes (3,500 kg per person on the planet). About 540 megatonnes (2%) of these were related to air traffic. With the growing concern about the carbon footprint of doing business, the fuel burned for transportation is a key focus of the logistics industry.

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