Marie Seco-Köppen appointed as Cargo iQ’s executive director

Cargo iQ has announced the appointment of a new executive director, Marie Seco-Köppen, and formally launched a new membership engagement scheme, which aims to further drive quality in the air cargo industry.

The scheme includes a tiered membership program, as well as a scorecard system measuring Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) across cargo movements, with both initiatives being piloted by Cargo iQ Board members.

Seco-Köppen, brings over 20 years’ experience in delivering process improvements and digitalization within global air freight.

She joins Cargo iQ from Im3pact AG, a consultancy for global transportation, and will take over from the current Executive Director, Lothar Moehle, a driving member of the organization since its inception 26 years ago.

Moehle is retiring in June after a 50-year career in air cargo.

“This new chapter promises to be exciting, and I am looking forward to engaging with the Board and members to further extend Cargo iQ’s unique cross-stakeholder quality program,” said Seco-Köppen, who is currently the Master Operating Plan (MOP) Working Group Chair at Cargo iQ.

“In our fragmented industry, quality standards and digitalization remain crucial to attain increased performance visibility, which is required to remove redundancies and jointly drive-up service consistency for the shipper.”

Seco-Köppen will formally step up as Cargo iQ Executive Director in May 2024.

“Cargo iQ is taking the next step in driving quality in our industry by engaging members in two initiatives that put implementation transparency at the heart of the process, as well as ensuring all stakeholders have clear KPIs against which they can measure success and define improvements,” said Moehle.

“The scorecard system will be open for all air cargo stakeholders who engage with Cargo iQ members to use, to measure the quality of their partner’s service, but also their own performance."

The scorecard initiative, which is under development for both forwarder-carrier and carrier-ground handling agent relationships, concentrates on measuring selected Cargo iQ Milestones, including Notified for Delivery (NFD) performance, which is a core KPI for the group.

Other KPIs are related to timely and complete information exchange during the execution along the shipment journey.

“For balance, we also include important Data Input Quality KPIs, as one cannot perform a service if data is input incorrectly,” said Rutger Jan Pegels, director performance management, KLM Cargo, and vice chair, Cargo iQ.

The tier system scheme awards members Bronze, Silver, or Gold membership according to level of implementation and conformance to reporting.

“With these new initiatives, we are creating more transparency among members related to the level of implementation towards whole network and or shipment scope,” said Kerstin Strauss, vice president, global operations air logistics, Kuehne + Nagel, and chair, Cargo iQ. “We are facilitating focused dialog on improvement to reach higher coverage.”