Measuring port performance and productivity

Abstract

Ports provide variety of service activities for the vessels, cargo and inland transport. The degree of satisfaction obtained by the shippers will indicate the level of port performance achieved. Therefore, the ports have to offer very satisfactory services to vessel operators and at the same time managed to provide optimal infrastructure based on the expected vessel type and cargo to be handled. The port performance thus requires a set of measures related to vessels stay at port, rate of loading/unloading the cargo and quality storage/inland transport. There exists a strong interrelationship between these set of measures and various port performance indicators. In the present paper, an attempt has been made to establish the relationship between the various observed performance parameters and the productivity (total traffic handled) of the port. Analysis shows that the number of vessels handled and the output per hook per shift have a strong positive correlation of 0.975 and 0.967 respectively.The idling time at berth has strong negative correlation of -0.934. The results of the study is useful in port planning and provide optimum port capacity and infrastructure like number of berths, quay cranes, tug boats and storage facilities for a port terminal. ©, © Indian Society for Hydraulics.