Improving the productivity of marine container terminals

The research presented in this thesis is concerned with several facets of the management of container terminals. One facet, of the research was to test the hypothesis that it is difficult to compare the productivities of container terminals. This is because the measures used to calculate productivity vary from operator to operator. In this work variability of productivity measures has been studied by analysing the time deductions that are applied to the operation of vessels and quay cranes when their productivity is being calculated. This initial study was carried out at West Swanson Dock, a container terminal located in Melbourne, Australia. It provided a corpus of knowledge that enabled the formulation of a survey questionnaire to investigate the performance measures of a number of container terminals in Australia and Asia. Results of the survey confirmed the hypothesis that productivity measures in container terminals are indeed highly variable from operator to operator