Container terminal services and quality

In this paper the relation between container terminal services and quality is explored. Quality elements that are important to terminal customers are reliability, flexibility, availability, time, costs, control, and after sales support. Overall, it is important for the terminal operator to provide services that deliver excellent quality and fit into the value chain of its customers. From past and current research it follows that especially reliability and costs (related to quality) are important quality dimensions for the overall quality. Theory shows that structural measurement of quality is possible and this also holds for quality of container terminal services. If measurement takes place, knowledge of the quality performance is the result. Probably, this knowledge about the quality performance results in a need for improvement. This improvement of terminal quality may result in a better price for the services provided. At this moment, it is not possible to compare terminal service quality on this regular bases, as no data are available.