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MTBS publishes on benchmarking of container terminals
2009-02-18 11:25
MTBS expert Wouter van Nus published an academic research paper on benchmarking the operational performance of maritime container terminals. The research was executed together with Prof. Dr. M.B.M de Koster and Prof Dr. B.M. Balk of the Erasmus University Rotterdam. The article, titled The Applicability of Data Envelopment Analysis to the Benchmarking of Container Terminals, is included in the Proceedings of The International Material Handling Research Colloquium (IMHRC). The IMRHC is a biannual event sponsored by CICMHE, the Material Handling Institute and many of the industry's leading suppliers. The 2008 edition was held at the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics (IML) in Dortmund, Germany.
An outline of the article is included below. Please visit the website of Material Handling Industry of America (http://www.mhia.org) for more information.
Many papers have appeared recently on container terminal benchmarking, based on public data, using Data Envelopment Analysis. This paper compares some of the recent benchmarking studies, compares them with own results based on primary data of large terminals obtained from APM and PSA and shows that results differ strongly. There are several causes for these differences: (1) inaccuracy of the public data used, (2) studies in literature compare different terminal types, (3) terminals of different scale are compared, and (4) terminals are mixed with orts. In practice, companies use mainly ratio scales as DEA studies exclude some vital variables influencing performance. It therefore only leads to partial insight and does not really help to improve performance. We conclude that DEA may be appropriate for container terminal benchmarking, but only if better quality and additional input and output data can be obtained. In its application, the analysis should be controlled for terminal types.
-WvN-
