Work simplificafion through the tansformation of work on board

Through a series of research on 10 Japanese ships since 1961, it was found that the relationship between number of crew and the resulting structural change of work on board ship can be formulated by a linear regression. Some of the major findings that are obtained from this new method are summarized as follows. As the number of crew decreases, the proportion of work for operating the ship (manoeuving and controlling work) increases, while the proportion of work which is not directly related to the operation decreases. This structural change can be attributed to work simplification resulting from four types of the transformation of work:

(a) The replacement of man'al work by putting machines on board.

(b) The transformation of work on board into work done by machines on shore.

(c) The transfer of work previously done on board to the shore.

(d) The transformation of work within a ship.     

An analysis of decision-making processes in multicultural maritime scenarios

With three research studies recently carried out the pros and cons of multicultural, multilingual crews have given a 'second' food for thought:

• The Seafarers' International Research Centre (SIRC): 'Transnational Seafarer Communities' and the research, 'Finding a balance: companies, seafarers and family life', linked to this [1]. The latter presented in Maritime Policy & Management, no. 1, January-March 2003.
• The Swedish National Maritime Museum (SNMM): Isolde av Singapore [2]. This research and sociological documentation will be reviewed in a later issue of Maritime Policy & Management.
• Horck, J., 'A culturally mixed student body; the WMU experience in fostering future decision makers' [3].

There is a growing conviction among seafarers and persons working in the land-based sector of the maritime industry (including ex-seafarers) that staff onboard and on shore should be prepared to work with crews and groups whose members come from different countries and cultures and speak different languages. The problem, though, is which culture will have to surrender and which will dominate? Will a third culture become the norm for common survival? Perhaps to understand oneself and be knowledgeable about others is a better way to avoid eventual conflicts.

There are nearly no research findings on how a programme should comprise the aims of facilitating comprehension and appreciation of influences, from differences in cultural backgrounds, on group performance and decisions.

This paper reports on the research carried out on students in the Shipping Management and the Maritime Education and Training courses at World Maritime University (WMU). How do post-graduate students holding unlimited certificates of competency, as well as holders of university degrees with experience in the maritime industry and maritime administration, come to a consensus decision?

The findings in this research are discussed in balance with the results from both the SIRC and the SNMM research which is interesting because the results, in some significant issues, are not the same.

A phenomenographic approach has been used to find out that a multicultural group is not free from working problems. Can cultural differences, perhaps, be developed from an assumed hindrance into a catalyst for stimulating national appreciation and cooperation? Perhaps the opposite is true; it might be a bottleneck for improvements in safety as formulated in the STCW95 and the ISM Code.     

Currency adjustment factors: some alternative strategies

The purpose of this paper is to consider some of the issues arising from currency fluctuations or currency disparities and in particular their effects upon freight earnings through the application of a currency adjustment factor (CAF).

The operation of CAFs has been a source of great concern to shippers and shipper's councils since their introduction some seven years ago. The basis of this concern has been the widening differential of applicable CAFs as a surcharge on basic freight rates. The CAF system has been regarded by many as iniquitous and punitive. Conferences have been accused of insulating themselves from currency losses due to exchange-rate variability consequent upon the introduction of flexible exchange rates in 1971. However, this mounting pressure has brought the operation of the CAF formula under close scrutiny especially from four sources.

(a) Some member Councils of the European Shippers' Council (ESC).

(b) The Japanese Shippers' Council (JSC).

(c) The question of the legality of differential CAFs under the Treaty of Rome

(d) Complaints from North Continental Maltsters.     

The relationship between design and economic performance of ships

Success in the shipping industry depends to large extent on the quality of the main asset: the ship. The owner or operator will ask herself: do I have the right ship for a certain job, and what performance can I achieve with a given ship. The relationship between the specifications of the ship, which are fixed in the design stage, and the economic performance of the ship has received some attention, but most of the previous work lacks in the extent to which economic performance is measured or expressed.

This paper describes an attempt to operationalize the concept of design for service in the maritime industry. The paper presents a lengthy review of previous work, which shows that some attention was devoted in the past to the relationship between economic and technical aspects of shipping. However, the 'economics' usually turned out to be simple cost calculations, instead of clear insight in costs and benefits of certain design decisions. The main variable for the shipowner to buy a ship, or to operate a ship on a certain route is earnings potential. The relation between technical specifications and earnings potential is fairly direct: desired earnings potential influences the design specifications, and the specification of the finished ship determine the earnings potential. The analysis in this paper shows that shipowners also consider cargo carrying capacity, speed and versatility, but no other, more detailed, design factors.

Subsequently, we present the design for service framework for the shipping industry. This framework points the attention to a thorough service requirements analysis that drives the design stage. Finally, some preliminary work is presented on empirical studies that are currently developed in the Netherlands.     

The bulk shipping business: market cycles and shipowners' biases

Despite a strong linkage with the macro-economic course, the bulk shipping market, in the short period, follows a typical cyclic pattern, where continuous freight adjustments balance demand and supply movements.

In this context—widely unstable but quite regular in its general scheme—the shipowners may have enough competencies and information to take logical and consistent decisions about ship purchasing and chartering.

Yet, why do they periodically make mistakes?

The analysis of shipowners' behaviour provides a reasonable answer: mistakes incur when they ignore or undervalue the market trends, following their personal intuition or even unwisely imitating their competitors.

The analysis of the Handysize segment among the bulk shipping business offers a significant example of the lack of timeliness in shipowners' behaviour: after a long period of disregard, operators began to notice the opportunities of this market niche and they are now heavily investing in minor units. Maybe it's not too late, but the market has already changed and only a few brave—or lucky—shipowners took advantage of the magic moment.     

Who pays the ferryman? An analysis of the ferry passenger's selection dilemma

Purpose: based on the known in the literature difference between expected and perceived quality, this study examines the factors and the ways that influence the passenger to select a ferry operator.

Methodology/approach: the research attempts to shed some light on the importance of every selection determinant by employing multinomial logistics analysis which identify that the convenience determinant is pivotal when selecting a service.

Findings: the main findings of the study indicate that among six different combinations of factors—models—perceived service quality together with price and convenience (satisfaction determinants) best describe the choice procedure followed by the passenger. The evidence is drawn from a survey performed in the Greek coastal shipping sector.

Originality/value of the paper: to survive in a competitive market, organizations must continuously strive to understand their customers' wants and needs. Although this is a highly recognized issue in the marketing agenda little or no research has been done on passenger satisfaction and the subsequent selection of a ferry operator.

Practical implications: by using the findings of this work, ferry operators may deeply and timely understand their customers' purchasing behaviour and adapt their marketing policies especially in a competitive and fast-changing environment.     

Job satisfaction and personality of Merchant Navy officers

Until recently little research had been carried out into job satisfaction of seafarers. Wastage in the shipping industry is higher than most other industries and although some improvements have been made to working conditions and facilities the wastage is still very high.

During the last two decades shipping technology has changed drastically, necessitated by changing economic factors, resulting in the need for highly trained personnel. Training costs are high, particularly for officers, and could be reduced if efficient selection processes were employed.

The project is designed to study perceived and implied (calculated) job satisfaction of officers who have served in the Merchant Navy for five years or more. Gone are the days of high port-time/sea-time ratios due to increased port and labour costs. Consequently seafarers may be confined together for longer periods at sea such that a different type of personality may be required to survive the stresses and strains of such a way of life. The project also attempted to discover whether the personalitics of the seafaring officers differ from those of the shoreside population and whether personality is related to job satisfaction at sea.

The project took the form of a survey by applying a questionnaire to Merchant Navy deck, engineer and radio officers at nautical educational establishments between September and October 1978.

The results showed that the majority of officers have a moderately high level of perceived job satisfaction whereas implied satisfaction was comparatively low. The personality of officers was found to be significantly different from that of the shoreside population in almost 50% of the 31 personality scales measured. There were also found to be differences between the personalities of deck and engineer officers.

A correlational study indicated that the personality of the Merchant Navy officer is related to overall job satisfaction.     

A model for forecasting future supply of shipping services at Australian ports

This paper aims to develop an integrated model for forecasting both the number of ship visits and their characteristics in the medium and long term. Knowledge of future shipping trends for any port is no doubt important, as the future number of ship visits and their characteristics may have implications for the physical facilities of a port. In addition, more reliance on tonnages as a revenue source has made this knowledge more valuable. The proposed model identifies such major economic determinants as the expected trade throughput, world shipping trends, standards of facilities and future plans of shipping companies/agents. The model examines three possible scenarios for the Port of Melbourne and produces a range of shipping forecasts based on certain assumptions. From the model the major findings were:

world trends in shipping did not have any immediate impact on the shipping trends at the Port of Melbourne;

Future shipping services at the Port of Melbourne in the next 11 years are most likely to be determined by trade demand rather than by technological developments overseas;

there has been no evidence to indicate that the Port of Melbourne has been excluded from the schedule of general cargo ships due to the Port's physical constraints.     

Delphi forecast of the dry bulk shipping industry in the year 2000

Technological forecasting in general, and the Delphi method in particular, are new decision making tools which so far have not gained wide acceptance in shipping circles.

An attempt was made to use the Delphi method to obtain the views of industry leaders on a host of issues governing dry bulk shipping. A three-round Delphi exercise became the basis for a scenario of the industry in the year 2000.

In addition to dating future events, the exercise tested the respondents' attitudes towards investment and innovation in the field of 'bulking' new edible commodities. The scenario and other data were used as input to the process of selecting an optimal vessel for the carriage of the relevant commodities.     

Currency adjustment factors

The manner in which CAFs have been applied to cargo carried by lines appears to be both arbitrary and secretive. This note intends to give some clarification as to how the CAF is calculated and the manner in which it is applied.

The operation of the two methods, i.e. the monthly review and the radical review, is merely a device which enables conferences to adjust effective charges so as to leave lines without a loss in real revenue, although minor losses and gains will be inevitable as the operation of the CAFs take time to be implemented.

Finally it is hoped to point out the volatilc nature of CAF changes impinges upon the uncertainty of lines' costs.     

Conference-shipper loyalty contacts: Time for a re-think?

This paper examines the purposal by the British Shipper's Council (BSC) and the UK government to place a statutory limit, by means of a regulations implementing the EEC rules for competition, upon the proportion of a shipper's cudstom that may be demanded in a loyalty agreement with a liner conference.

The development of 70% loyalty is traced through the following the various drafts of the EEC competition rules for sea transport; the department of trade investigation which found freight rate disparities that were caused partially by the less competitive environment in the UK than on the Continent; and evidence given on 70% loyalty beforew the house of Lords Select Commitee on the European Communities.

By considering the precise proposals, as suggested by the BSC, and means of enforcing them, 70% loyalty is found to be eminently practicable. the short-term consequences of its introduction are unlikely to be great, considering the shippers' needs for a good quality service; but in time the additional competition fostered by a less-than-100% tie would cause radical changes; conferences would have to aopt limit-pricing and respond to competition loyalty ties might be restricted to service contracts with large shippers. These effects would be felt far more in the UK since the continental environment is in any case more competitive.

It is concluded that 70% loyalty should be imposed upon conferences by means of the EEC Regulations in order to enhance the competitive environment of linear shipping.     

Container shipping in 1990

By 1990 express shuttle container ships will dominate the USA/North European and USA/Pacific trades. The pattern is already apparent in the Pacific. These will touch only a few ports such as Halifax, New York and Virginia on the Atlantic and Los Angeles/Long Beach, Oakland and Seattle/Tacoma in the West. Their low costs and good services will capture over 80% of available general cargo. Round the world systems will be left with lucrative fringe business in the Mediterranean, US Gulf/South Atlantic, Singapore, India and Arab countries.

Progress will be sensitive to twelve trends. Most important of these will be labour resistance and management concerns about rapid obsolescence of ships and terminals. Rail and ship costs have been rationalized and are not as flexible as terminal costs. The ultimate terminal will consume about one third of the time and money presently needed.

This paper is chiefly intended to suggest a forecasting methodology.     

On the beaten track: a view of US West-Coast container port competition

More than a century ago far-sighted railroad builders and steamship operators were seeking the shortest intermodal itineraries between the eastern United States and the Orient. A combination of locational fact and the factual outcomes of 19th century railroad building left Chicago roughly equidistant in railway mileage from what became the four great US West-Coast port complexes in the Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle regions. Their nearly equivalent rail access to Chicago and points east has renewed significance in the container era.

This paper concerns the efforts of US Pacific seaboard ports to stay 'on the beaten track' with respect to container shipments between Asia and the eastern United States. The West-Coast ports are transit points dividing the transcontinental and transoceanic segments of long intercontinental journeys. From origins to destinations there are, in fact, many possibly feasible itineraries, including all-water routes.

The West-Coast ports have considerable control over their own site improvements. On the other hand, with respect to transiting container traffic, the ports may influence, but are unlikely to control, their own situations. Since the major container port facilities are very often on long-term lease to large intermodal carriers, the latter are making the important shipping and routeing decisions. The carriers tend in fact to set the tone and level of port competition.

What is the nature of the competition between container ports? Is it a figment of the publicist's imagination and perpetuated by irrelevant statistical boasting? Is it perhaps something forced on the ports by carriers eager to play one port off against another in a 'lowest bid' game? At what geographical scale might port competition be most useful or, maybe, least wasteful?     

1981 air-cargo market penetration

This paper examines the depth of air-cargo market penetration being made in the UK by the air-transport industry, following the collapse of I.A.T.A.-constructed fares a nd rates in the wake of de-regulation on the US domestic market in 1978.

It looks at statistical evidence from H.M. Customs and Excise for 1978, 1979 and 1980, and in particular makes a distribution costs analysis by comparing sea and air costs together. In the current economic climate, given today's freight rates and the fact that air-freight is rapidly turning towards bulk unitization with a frequent scheduled delivery service, a reassessment of company distribution costs could be financially beneficial to many exporters traditionally using sea transport.     

Cargo handling productivity. Part 2. The findings

This is the second of two papers on cargo handling productivity presenting the results of the model developed int he first [1] which had been designed to test a productivity measurement method with cross-sectional empirical data. Four productivity measures were employed. Two related cargo handling to time, with labour brought into the analysis as an independent variable. The third productivity measure expressed total throughput as an aspect of labour productivity, while the final measure was a full productivity index developed by relating output to both capital and labour.

The productivity measurement technique demonstrated that this method can be used for cross-sectional studies and can cope with and allow for variation in non-controllable extraneous factors, thus proving useful for policy decision-makers in shipping lines and/or port authorities.

This paper presents the results of the prodictivity analysis for which the analytical design was decribed in Part 1. The first section briefly restates the productivity indices developed. The principal results and tests on these measures are present in Section 2 with conclusion following in Section 3.     

Contributions to maritime economics—Zenon S. Zannetos, the theory of oil tankship rates

This paper discusses the importance of Zannetos' 1966 book for the development of maritime economic thought. The main contributions of the book are recounted, and the empirical work in the book is reviewed.

The analysis of the present paper is a citation research on the maritime economics literature that refers to the book. Of the 42 papers in the set, about one-third refers to the book in general. A total of 35 papers refer to one or more elements of the book, with an equal number of references to: (1) the term structure of freight rates; (2) the empirical findings on the form of the supply curve; and (3) on the verification of his results.

The general conclusion of the citation analysis is that, apparently, a number of elements of his work are still very valid for current maritime economics thinking, while maritime economists have disregarded several other elements. The latter seems unjustified for some of the business structure observations that are made in the book, such as the notion that the ship is the firm, and the elasticity of expectations. The former observation is the basis for virtually all empirical work in maritime economics that is based on individual contract data (all freight rate analysis is of this nature), and the second is the basis for the analysis of investment behaviour in shipping, investigations of cyclicality and so on.

Zannetos can definitely be seen as the initiator of the important field of term structure analysis in maritime economics. In addition to this, there are several topics in the 1966 book that are as yet unexplored, and deserve empirical scrutiny.     

The impact of US regularory practices on the productivity of ocean liner services?

This United States stands alone amongst the nations of the world in its attempt to unilaterally regulate transnational ocean linear services. The major reason for current US regularity policies with regard to scheduled ocean transportation lies in its fundamental distruct of any form of co-operation amongst competitors as demonstrated by its history of antitrust legislation.

The linear industry, because of its unique technical and economic charectersitics has given rise to the establishment of ocean conferences—co ordinating sgreements between the operators of linear vessels. Whilst ocean conferences are permitted—even encouraged—by the their most diluted form, the so-called 'open conferences.

This Paper offers a critical review of Successive US regulatory practices in maritime transport. It is argued that these practices result in excess costs in US trades to the order of $1 billion annually, and that the linear industry's efficient functioning is seriously impaired by these rules-rules imposed by a government administration which fails to recognize that the linear industry's technical efficiency is of far greater importance than its market performance.     

Designing optimal routes in a liner shipping problem

A real liner shipping problem of deciding optimal weekly routes for a given fleet of ships is considered and a solution method for solving the problem is proposed. First, all feasible routes for each ship are generated together with the cost and the duration for each route. The routes are given as input to an integer programming (IP) problem. By solving the IP problem, routes for each ship are selected such that total transportation costs are minimized and the demand at each port is satisfied. The total duration for the routes that are selected for a given ship must not exceed one week.

The real liner shipping problem is solved together with four randomly generated test problems. The computational results show that proposed solution method is suitable for designing optimal routes in several liner shipping problems.     

Data processing and telematic work and projects in Western Mediterranean ports

This report which is the object of this summary is the result of Western Mediterranean cooperation both in origin and in execution, during which interviews with over 100 people working in port areas in seven countries were carried out. This has led to a working group involving several professions to promote data processing and electronic data interchange in transport within the area.

CETMO which takes part in these cooperative tasks as an international centre of the United Nations, has drawn up the report. The aim is to provide the group of interested companies and institutions with data on the realities, projects or intentions to develop data processing and telematic systems in the ports of Algiers, Barcelona, Casablanca, Genoa, Lisbon, Marseilles, Tunis and Valencia.

The report presents the results seen from the point of view of the user; the transport operator. Emphasis is therefore placed on system functions and on organizational aspects in order to point out the leaders in port computerization and also the obstacles encountered. The data collected refer to the last nine months of 1988.