How to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of container terminals

I'm afraid this is the cultural difference between the East and the West! Limitations of the Top 100 Container Ports Throughput Ranking For a long time, Cargo Systems magazine (Cargo Systems) will annually publish a ranking of the throughput of the world's top 100 container ports, which is undoubtedly a very valuable reference tool for container terminal operators. This is undoubtedly a valuable reference tool for container terminal operators, but it still has limitations in providing specific operational information. First of all, 80% of the 646 container terminals in the world are actually quite small in terms of throughput, with only 500,000 TEU or less. And 80% of the world's container throughput is done by 30 to 40 really big ports. Each of these top 100 ports that make the list and many more that follow usually has two or more terminals. So looking at the rankings alone, the differences in transhipment as well as import/export trade or container sizes between the various terminal operators within these ports are not visible. Secondly, because of the traditional definition of TEU throughput, transshipment containers are counted as a single import and a single export, which makes it unfair to compare them with boxes that are simply imported or exported. This ranking is a bit misleading, for example, comparing the port of Shanghai with the port of Singapore in the Far East. Since the proportion of transshipment containers in the port of Shanghai (about 40%) is much lower than that of the port of Singapore (more than 90%), the port of Shanghai may surpass the port of Singapore and top the list of the world's largest ports if calculated on the basis of the natural box in and out of the port. Thirdly, a major problem in evaluating the productivity of container terminals lies in intermodal transportation. Whether the transportation is done by water or by land, the requirements of the customers are totally different. Not only are there some basic differences in container handling requirements at marine container terminals, but shipping lines also use different services depending on the requirements of different customers for road and rail services. Of course these differences exist not only in transshipment, trans-shipment and barge transportation, but also in the import and export trade, but regardless of the mode of consolidation, there are many unique customer service requirements, and one factor **** the same as the efficiency of the container yard, which is the evaluation criteria for different storage systems. Regional variability in terminal productivity As a service industry, ports are different from manufacturing. For example, in the aircraft manufacturing industry, for the competitiveness of Boeing and Airbus, a series of indicators can be developed to analyze and study. Customers (airlines) will buy the products with better cost performance or higher competitiveness. However, since ports have a natural monopoly and are not relocatable geographically, it is meaningless to compare the terminal productivity of Shanghai and Shenzhen ports. For example, regardless of the ranking order of Shanghai and Shenzhen ports, but one thing is certain, Shunde production of electrical products will never be shipped to the Shanghai port exports; and Kunshan's container will never run to the Shenzhen port to export. Terminal investors will never adjust their investment objectives according to your ranking. Therefore, the productivity index of such a terminal is meaningless. Then, we usually say that the port terminal production efficiency in the end with whom to compare it? Obviously, it should be a comparison between ports within the same port group. As we all know, in recent years, the Bohai Sea, the Yangtze River Delta, the southeast coast, the Pearl River Delta, the southwest coast of the five major port groups within the port competition is intensifying. The phenomenon of price competition and duplicated construction has even appeared in some port groups. Comparing the terminal production efficiency of ports within the same port group through a series of scientific and reasonable evaluation indexes can help to reasonably allocate resources, reduce logistics costs, optimize the regional industrial structure and transportation structure, promote the regional economic development, and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of logistics. Both the government, shippers, terminal investors, shipping companies, and local residents will benefit as a result. The primary criterion for measuring the productivity of container terminals is regional variability. Ports in the Far East cannot be compared to those in Europe and the United States. On the face of it, capital and operating costs can also be very different. Therefore, comparisons of productivity should be regional, and in particular comparisons between competing neighboring ports with the *** same hinterland are only relevant. Indeed, the sensitivity of the data becomes apparent once the throughput of the berths is considered exclusively. This is because in Europe, the United States and the Far East depending on the form of results chosen there are large gaps, not as small as might be expected. In addition, it is extremely important that the key to making decision analysis is to simplify the decision. The most successful designed systems or products tend to always be those that are simple. Therefore, to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness between different terminals does not require a very large system of metrics, but rather just a single metric that is simple enough to design. Container Terminal Efficiency Indicator Design From a system design perspective, a marine container terminal has four components, namely, ship-to-shore, shore-to-yard, yard-to-yard, and yard-to-gate. If the core of the terminal is the yard, it is linked to the berth on the one hand and to the gate on the other. Therefore, berth services and gate operations may be regarded as two major factors in evaluating container port throughput, and these two factors affect the efficiency of the yard. Yard efficiency is a key part of management control, but it is not a key indicator of customer standards. Therefore, if you analyze the efficiency of terminals by berths and gates separately, the results are often different even in the same port. For example, in the case of Southampton Container Terminal many years ago, gate congestion affected the operation of the entire terminal, a phenomenon known as the knock-on effect. That said, we believe that berth productivity is the main factor affecting customer costs. Many container ports use the "TEUs per meter of berth shoreline per year" metric to measure berth productivity. As long as the capital investment does not change over the course of a year, this analysis is simple and appropriate for internal measurement to assess port changes. When making historical comparisons at the same terminal, it is important to be aware of the before and after comparisons. If a shoreside crane is added, it becomes meaningless from a productivity perspective. A direct comparison is reasonable if reducing worker breaks or reducing the amount of time spent on mechanism modifications increases the level of worker output. If giving workers additional tools enables them to be more productive, then the analysis of productivity must also incorporate cost measurement tools. Therefore, the core metric for comparing terminal productivity should be "TEU/meter of berth shoreline/year". The basic productivity criterion is to accurately measure the output of individual berths under similar operating conditions or status quo, but when some variation is included, a cost factor must be added. The primary purpose of any business operation is to improve service levels, whether the business is in manufacturing, distribution, professional services, retail or any other industry. It has been proven that customers are willing to pay more for better service, especially if it reduces the cost of doing business for them. However, different industries have different services. It can be defined as delivery time or efficiency or a company's attitude towards defects or willingness to improve in a timely manner according to different customer requirements and so on. But with service comes charges, and it is possible to provide a better service than is actually required in the marketplace, and no doubt this reduces the profitability of the business. Considering the utility, there is a contradiction in the criterion of utilization of berths. Here, the optimal berth utilization is considered to be 65-70%, which already takes into account the weather as well as changes in the schedule. If the utilization rate is higher than this standard there may be congestion; while below this standard, then there is an additional cost to maintain this excess capacity.