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....

Vessels and seaports are an essential part of world trade and economy. Owing to soaring competition between the container terminals and pressure from shipping lines to shorten the vessel port stay, operations research techniques are continuously being developed to enhance terminal performance...

This paper presents a simple model for estimating newbuilding costs. Regression equations are estimated on a large data set of recent 2003–2007 shipyard deliveries reported in Lloyd's Shipping Economist. The equations developed in this paper can be used in a wide variety of economic analyses...

Development of economically efficient expansion strategies for ports and transport infrastructure in general is highly relevant in view of the increasing need for justification of public funding for such projects. Optimisation of the investment and congestion costs, taking into account economies...

It is generally accepted that quality management is considered a valuable competitive factor for firms that confers them competitive advantages and enables them to achieve superior performance. Although there have been numerous studies examining general quality management practices and...

An integrated supply chain (SC) model comprising both the warehousing and the transportation functions of the SC is developed that can help to reduce SC inventory levels and total SC costs while maintaining and/or improving customer service levels under dynamic operating conditions. The dynamic...

The maritime shipping industry has experienced significant technological and management changes over the past several decades. This study analyses the total factor productivity of Japan’s shipping industry by applying the Luenberger productivity indicator from 1996 to 2005. This is a...

Shipping companies must manage their fleets efficiently in order to stay in business. Ship routing and scheduling is a complex planning problem that may play an important role in this respect. We present TurboRouter, a decision support system that has been developed to aid planners in this...

This study addresses a two-objective berth allocation problem: ship service quality expressed by the minimisation of delay in ships' departure and berth utilisation expressed by the minimisation of the total service time. In this problem, noninferior solutions are expected to be identified. Two...

In recent years, maritime security has become a major concern on the international maritime agenda. If security measures and initiatives are not carefully designed and effectively implemented, they can negatively impact the whole maritime transport chain. Security improvements resulting from...