The Time Factor in Liner Shipping Services

Managing the time factor is an important issue in contemporary liner service design. Increased port congestion and infrastructure constraints are some of the reasons impeding shipping lines from delivering impeccable liner services to their customers. Waiting times and delays put pressure on schedule reliability and might incur logistics costs to the customer. This paper assesses the trade-offs linked to the time factor in liner service schedules from the perspective of a shipping line. The paper not only assesses causes of schedule unreliability, it also discusses the wide array of measures and planning tools shipping lines deploy to maximise schedule reliability. Maritime Economics & Logistics (2006) 8, 19–39. doi:10.1057/palgrave.mel.9100148

Containerisation, Box Logistics and Global Supply Chains: The Integration of Ports and Liner Shipping Networks

In 2006, container shipping celebrated its 50th anniversary as an innovation that had a tremendous impact on the geography of production and distribution. Production became globalised by a better usage of comparative advantages while distribution systems were able to interact more efficiently. This paper analyses the mounting pressures on box logistics in light of global supply chains. It will be demonstrated that the basic principle of containerisation remained the same notwithstanding scale increases in vessels and terminals and a clear productivity increase in container handling. Although the container was an innovation initially applied for maritime transportation, the emergence of global supply chains has placed intense pressures to implement containerisation over inland freight distribution systems. Box – containerised – logistics is increasingly challenged to deal with the ever-increasing time, reliability and costs requirements of global supply chains. Imbalances in trade flows and accessibility and capacity constraints are among some of the developments that are making it increasingly difficult to reap the full benefits of containerisation. Maritime Economics & Logistics (2008) 10, 152–174. doi:10.1057/palgrave.mel.9100196