物流学的应用

Paul French上海报道，随国内日趋壮大的消费队伍电器购买需求的增长，激烈的价格战已经侵蚀了大量利润，而更加完善的物流和分销手段也许正是解决这一问题的关键所在。[编按]     

The challenge of liberalising domestic airline competition in a less developed country

A new wave of liberalisation of domestic airline competition is taking place in less developed nations, although the initial motivation in most cases is to supplement the capacity of the government's own airline. Liberalisation tends to begin with free market entry and a strong interest in privatisation while other regulatory controls are maintained. This position is untenable and policy makers in the less developed countries are having to learn quickly without the benefit of the detailed analyses that preceded liberalisation in the developed countries. This paper explores these problems and focuses on the lessons that policy makers in the less developed countries can draw from experiences elsewhere.     

Labour relations and the transfer of the Panama Canal[1]

The international maritime community is concerned about Panama's preparedness to undertake the responsibility of what many consider to be the world's greatest maritime asset, the Panama Canal. In accordance with treaty provisions, the longer within the dominion of the U.S. government and its attendant regulatory framework and policies. To a great extent, Panama's efforts to prepare for the transfer thus far have been driven by its objective of a seamless transfer, whereby the status quo (meaning the Canal's existing institutional and organizational framework and attendant policies and procedures) would be preserved as much as possible. This would assure the maritime community that it can expect the same service and cost standards traditionally enjoyed under the Panama Canal Commission's stewardship. Still of great concern, however, is the continued reliability and productivity of the Canal's labour force; the Canal's reliability and efficient performance in the past is often attributed to its history of harmonious labour management relations. This article addresses some of the critical labour relations issues that will need to be considered even if Panama's status quo objective for the transfer is achieved.     

Ballast Water Treatment systems: “Old” and “New” ones

This paper offers an overview of the currently available Ballast Water Treatment systems, their efficacy in reducing the number of organisms in relation with the IMO and other, future standards, and explores potentially new and promising technologies and current gaps.     

Charting a New Paradigm of Container Hub Port Development Policy: The Asian Doctrine

This paper proposes the conceptual model of the Asian (Port) Doctrine to explain the successful development of top ranking container ports in Asia during the past four decades. This paper draws a new paradigm for the role of government as a third governance approach in addition to Anglo-Saxon and European doctrines by describing how Asian countries have developed container hub ports by investing in infrastructure as social overhead capital to support export-led growth. We survey characteristics and outcomes in major Asian container port developments and one European port in terms of a port development policy. The findings are presented in a comparative overview of government investment in functional elements of port, maritime infrastructure and landside connections to container ports. This paper confirms that the existing two doctrines—Anglo-Saxon and European doctrines—are not sufficient to explain the Asian success in major container port developments. The proposed framework contends that a newly proposed Asian Doctrine can accomplish this with the help of cross-subsidization, strategic and administered port pricing mechanism.     

Refining light rapid transit typology: a UK perspective

Abstract

Recent developments in the light rapid transit sector have introduced transit modes that are attempting to imitate the performance of others, e.g. buses with tram-like characteristics. The boundaries between existing definitions of what is a bus, tram or train are becoming blurred. For transport studies and practice this requires a review of how we define modes. This is not just a matter of semantics, but has safety and competition regulation implications for system operators. This paper proposes a structure to produce rail- and bus-based transit mode definitions and typology that are appropriate for modern use. A decision tree is used to classify and define the transit modes as guided-bus, trolley-bus, light rail and tram-train and is provided with example systems. The paper provides a robust definitional framework that allows transit system promoters, operators and other interested parties to have a consistent basis of reference when specifying and comparing rapid transit systems.     

NYK与绿色同行

自2003年起,日本邮船集团就开始启用一种系统,搜集全球约500艘船只的数据信息,其中包括航速、油耗、行程距离和天气状况.航行结束后,系统会自动将这些数据制成表格,通过卫星发送到公司的环境数据分析系统.     

Optimal slack time for timed transfers at a transit terminal

At transit terminals where two routes interchange passengers, total system costs may be reduced by allowing some “slack” time in the vehicle schedules to decrease the probability of missed connections. Transfer cost functions are formulated and used to determine optimal slack time for simple systems with transfers between one bus route and one rail line. Some analytic results are derived for empirical discrete and Gumbel distributions of bus arrival times. Relations between the optimal slack times and headways, transfer volumes, passenger time values, bus operating costs, and standard deviations of bus and train arrivals are also developed numerically using normally distributed arrivals. However, the proposed numerical approach can optimize slack times for any observed arrival distributions. The results provide some guidelines on desirable slack times and show that schedule coordination between the two routes is not worth attempting when standard deviations of arrivals exceed certain levels. Possible extensions of this work are suggested in the last section.     

Perceptions of new electronic media for business communication

A model of communications media choice in business organizations is formulated based upon the results of exploratory interviews and the consumer choice literature. Choice is modelled as a function of organizational characteristics, individual characteristics, communication activity characteristics, communication initiator-recipient relationships and perceptions and feelings about available media. Hypotheses concerning media perceptions are developed from the exploratory interviews and tested using survey results from two firms in the Chicago region. The methodology developed in this research provides a useful approach to exploring preferences for and choices of communication media. As a paradigm for future research, it can be used to extend our understanding of communications media usage.