A Transnational Approach of Research Development Projects in

Maritime Transport
Cristina Nistor
1
Abstract: Characterized by scientific methodologies and approaches,
research activities are desired to amplify the benefits from maritime transport
initiatives. Through research developments projects, the maritime-based logistics
concepts replace simple transport with high uality services, orientated towards the
construction of a veritable alternative to road transport. The paper is presenting four
projects with transnational partners with objectives of developing the maritime
infrastructure, transport services, logistics and management.
Maritime transport not only acts as the backbone of international trade, it also
offers great potential for intra-community commercial exchanges Research activities
have a major implication and a socioeconomic impact in the market and financial
strategies, operational and organisational optimization. The research development
projects provides application of ne technologies and influence in an effective ay
ports, terminal operations and maritime safety. !ne good example in this sense is the
"!nternational "oading #nit$ concept, hich updates the lorry from a conventional
transport vehicle to a loading unit in the intermodal transport that is interoperable
beteen road, rail and maritime modes. !ther research developments and strategies
are presented as follos.
1. Six Sigma
#evelopments research invested considerable resources and joined efforts in
transnational research areas to develop domains like transport netork and logistical
services.
$n the early nineties, many C%&T Actions (%ooperation in &cience and
Technology started to address the technical and organisational problems of maritime
transport. The results of the research actions provide useful solutions and some of
them can be considered essential technologies for the development of sea motoray
concepts. In the United States, The Gulf Coast Region Maritime Technology Center worked
closely with the Central Region of the U.S. Deartment of Transortation Maritime
!dministration "M!R!D#
'
and (ollinger )ulf Repair *()R+ facilitating implementation
of Six Sigma and integrating state of the art management techni$ues. &ix &igma is a set of
practices originally developed by Motorola to systematically improve processes by
eliminating defects. The term "&igma, is often used as a scale for levels of
"goodness, or -uality. .sing this scale, "&ix &igma, e-uates to /.0 defects per one
million opportunities. Therefore, &ix &igma started as a defect reduction effort in
manufacturing and as then applied to other business processes for the same purpose.
&ix &igma is a business improvement methodology that focuses an organization on
understanding and managing customer re-uirements, aligning key business processes
to achieve those re-uirements, utilizing rigorous data analysis to minimize variation
in those processes and driving rapid and sustainable improvement to business
processes. &ix &igma asserts that continuous efforts to reduce variation in process
outputs is 'ey to business success, manufacturing and business processes can be
measured, analyzed, improved and controlled, succeeding at achieving sustained
-uality improvement re-uires commitment from the entire organization, particularly
from top-level management. The reality is that metrics and terminology have not
been standardized across the maritime industry, impeding the measurement and
comparison of performance. 1ean &ix &igma provides the core capabilities to define
performance metrics that everyone can understand and to drive measurable process
improvements for the benefit of both ports and shippers.
$mplementation of 1ean &ix &igma is expanding to the commercial shipping
industry in the .nited &tates. )iven the diversity of process-level factors that affect
port and ship operator capabilities, 1ean &ix &igma is essential to sort out the factors
that are most important to maritime operations. 2s a result, both ports and shippers
are able to make continuous improvements in competitiveness, efficiency, safety and
environmental responsiveness in the face of the industry3s relentless groth.
M2R2# applied the &ix &igma strategy in ship coating applications as paint
represents the highest cost item and the most groth ork during a typical ship dry-
dock. The results of this project shoed significant savings by M2R2# and ()R.
The %ollege of 4illiam and Mary5s Mason &chool of (usiness from ..&. has
partnered ith Maersk 1ine 1td to provide training in a nely developed 1ean &ix
&igma management system. 2 subsidiary of parent company 2.6. Moller-M27R&8,
the orld3s largest shipping company, the plan calls for the comprehensive training
of key Maersk 1ine, 1imited managers and professionals in its nely developed 1ean
&ix &igma management system, a poerful and uni-ue collection of -uality and
'
The .nited &tates Maritime 2dministration or M2R2#, is an agency of the .nited &tates
#epartment of Transportation that maintains the 9ational #efense Reserve :leet as a ready source of
ships for use during national emergencies and assists in fulfilling its traditional role as the nation5s
fourth arm of defense in logistically supporting the military hen needed.
efficiency methods, tools and techni-ues. The contract represents a customized
engagement, here the faculty of the Mason &chool designed the 1ean &ix &igma
training and project management program to fit Maersk3s uni-ue needs and operating
environment. 6articipants in the program ill represent Maersk3s key operating and
business processes that ill bring added value to its operations by using 1ean &ix
&igma methods to dramatically improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their
processes.
1ean &ix &igma is an integrated methodology, applying to proven, poerful
management methodologies; 1ean and &ix &igma. !f these, 1ean is primarily
concerned ith ensuring the efficiency of processes, so that they operate at minimum
cost and at ma(imum speed, using resources in an optimal ay. &ix &igma, on the
other hand, focuses chiefly on process effectiveness, that is, customer satisfaction,
high uality and near-zero defect rates. These methods have been knon and used in
business and industry for some time, primarily in a stand-alone mode. $ntegrated
training and deployment of the to processes have the result to get goods from
remote sources to far aay destinations around the globe, in the least amount of time
and at minimum cost. This is also knon as the supply chain and the real value of
1ean &ix &igma to Maersk is that it ill enable it to do an even more successful and
competitive job in managing it. (ased on significant primary research, research
provides key insights into &ix &igma and 1ean -uality initiative implementation. :or
example, the %ustomer #ashboard is a critical statistical tool employed by orld-
class companies to solicit feedback from key customers and identify critical product
and service measurements. This tactic helped one company to reduce the performance
mean for order to delivery time from '< to '= days. The implementation of &ix &igma
enabled a top company to save >0?? million in costs- translating into a profit of >'??
million.
$n the &ixth :rameork 6rogramme, 7. research projects concentrate on the
implementation of high-tech and concrete support to the realisation of motorays of
the sea.
!. "mprove# Port$Ship "nterface ("PS"
Many innovative concepts ere developed through research activities in the
maritime transport. :or example, the !)&! *$mproved 6ort-&hip $nterface+ project
developed ne concepts for efficient port-ship interfaces. 2 ne cargo handling
system, able to handle the most idely used cargo containment units, as suggested
for the terminal. Regarding ships, to innovative types of vessel *$6&$ ships for &hort
&ea &hipping and $6&$ barges for inland navigation+ ere developed to match the
highly efficient handling facilities and A*+s *Automated *uided +ehicles+. These
concepts led to the prototypes of a future high efficiency loading@unloading system
for the maritime transport. %ontainer Terminals are experiencing increased pressure
to raise their productivity levels and capacity, in order to handle the increasing
amounts of container cargo due to globalization. #ue to space restrictions and other
financial factors, automated solutions have been developed. 2)As are one of those
automated solutions for the horizontal transportation ith in a %ontainer Terminal. 2
recent 7uropean sponsored project has lead to the development of a ne generation
of 2)As that are using cassettes namely $6&$ - 2)As. 2n agent-based simulator has
been developed ith the purpose of constructing and evaluating dispatching strategies
for this ne developed 2)A system. :indings from the simulation experiment are
suggesting that a cost estimation based approach is much more suited than an
inventory based. $n addition to that, the results are very convincing in that the number
of cassettes used is the most dominate factor despite dispatching strategy for
obtaining a fast ship turnaround time. :M% Technologies offers a full array of
ruggedly built 2utomated )uided Aehicle types ith standard and custom 2)As to
meet the toughest material handling challenges. :M% Technologies is the leading
manufacturer and supplier of sub sea production systems, including sub sea trees,
controls and manifold and tie-in systems. $n addition :M% has a complement of
engineering and customer support services such as system engineering, flo
assurance, flo measurement, and project management. :M% Technologies ill
thoroughly evaluate your material handling needs to develop the right 2)A solution
for your facility. This includes conducting engineering studies and simulations to
ensure that automated guided vehicle system ill exceed all the re-uirements. $n
order to succeed in transferring transport of goods in 7urope from land to sea *&hort
&ea &hipping @ $nland 9avigation+, the complete logistic chain using aterborne
transport as a major component, must be competitive. The competitive advantage
must include both economic and "just in time, *B$T+ components.
The $6&$ project contributes to developing this kind of logistics concept, and
the goals for the projects are to develop a concept for flexible port-ship interfaces in
the context of added value, intermodal door to door logistics in 7urope, based in
increased use of aterborne transport, including utilization of inland aterays. $6&$
intention is to develop methods and e-uipment for effective transfer of cargo and
information about cargo in the above mentioned land@ater interfaces, ith focus on
high efficiency and lo investments and to verify the effectiveness of multimodal
cargo exchange in a "door-to-door, context.
%. &ptimise# S'stem for an "nnovative Rail "ntegrate# Seaport Connection
(&S"R"S
!&$R$& is addressing -uality problems ith the seaport-hinterland
connection by train. $ts objective is to develop a simulation tool and generic guidance
to assist freight operators to increase efficiency. 2n efficient solution, hich includes
a rail hub, seaport container shuttles and long-distance train services for the seaport-
hinterland train connections ere also developed. The objectives of the research are
creating a model for the development of a rail integrated hinterland connections,
planning of an economic hub and spoke system beteen different seaports and
several economic regions in the hinterland and a hinterland seaport center including
the analysis of user re-uirements, transport demand, concepts for intermodal
terminals in the seaport, in the hinterland and the hub, the rail transport, the enterprise
organization, the offered services in general as ell as for a pilot relation. !ther
objectives are related to re-uirements for an information and %ommunication system
supporting the business process as ell as the terminal operation, demonstration sites;
economic hub-and-spoke systems beteen seaports and economic regions in the
hinterland from the 9orth-Range *e.g. 2nterp-#uisburg, 2nterp-:rankfurt,
2nterp-Munich, Rotterdam-#uisburg, Rotterdam-:rankfurt etc.+. The partners from
the project are from three countries; (eratende Aerkehrzingenieure and
Mammesmann Transmodal )M(C from )ermany, $ntercontainer-$nterfrigo and
&ociDtD 9ationale des %hDmins de :er from (elgium and 9etherlands 7conomic
$nstitute.
(. "ntermo#al corri#ors for freight transport in )*rope +ase# on shortsea
shipping ("NC&S,"PP"N-
&trategic objectives of $9%!&C$66$9) is rebalancing and integrating different
transport modes by freight transport corridors, intermodal freight transport systems,
technologies and strategies. The objective of the this proposal is to develop a detailed
realizable scenario of a competitive intermodal 7uropean door-to-door freight
transport system based on short-sea@rail combined transport ith a minimum of road
haulage at the end points. The system ill be designed for extended service to@from
inland aterays by sea-going vessels. The geographical coverage of the system is at
the present stage thought of as the coastline &candinavia-(enelux-:rance-&pain-
6ortugal-$taly and hinterlands spanned by connected terminals around relevant ports
of this coastline. This geographical area ill be the focal area for empirical research
in the project. 2nd further, sea-based extensions from this system to the 7astern
(altic region, )reece, and to 9orthern 2frica ill be given some, but less intensive,
considerations in conclusion. &hort-sea as a concept is taken here to include distances
such as from &candinavia to &pain@6ortugal. The proposed intermodal system ill be
designed in a ay that maximizes its ability to gain market shares from road transport
in a competitive market and particularly from long haul door-to-door road-based
transports. 7fficient and effective system components ill be developed and
integrated into a fe alternative designs for intermodal transport from door to door.
7xisting infrastructure ill be taken as given. &ome alternatives ill build on existing
technology and best practice regarding vehicles, vessels, and handling of load units.
Coever, one alternative ill put some effort in analyzing hether more creative
vessel design can improve the speed of load units from door to door by improving
vessel speed, container transfer beteen vessel and port terminals@trains and some
pre-sorting of load units during the sea voyage. This focus on creative vessel design
is explained by our hypothesis that speed is of prime concern for an intermodal
system that is designed for competition ith direct road transport. The project implies
that the best size of hinterlands ill be one of the outcomes of the research project.
"#etailed realizable scenario, is one key concept of the objective. (y "detailed
scenario, is meant a complete scientific description of the intermodal system in terms
of system components, models, and important operational issues. This description
ill cover technical, economical, environmental, and managerial aspects. :rom a
technical point of vie, the concept implies that efficient and effective system
components ill be developed and integrated into an optimal or near optimal design
for intermodal transport from door to door. The different components ill not be
specified in all technical details. Coever, each component must be realizable and
based on knon technology, hether in practical use at present or not. #evelopment
ill only be driven to the stage here component performance, system performance,
component interoperability, cost structures, transport -uality performance, and
environmental impact can be estimated or evaluated. The existing infrastructure ill
be regarded as given and taken as one of the starting points. Railay rolling stock and
road vehicles ill be taken as given ith the exception of aspects concerning transfer
of load units beteen means of transport, hich may also influence aspects of
terminal design. &ome more creative designs of vessels adapted to the proposed
system ill be analyzed in order to improve vessel speed and container handling
speed. This choice is motivated by the mission of the proposed system; to gain
mar'et shares from direct road transport. &uch gains ill not be possible unless the
intermodal system can offer throughput times for load units from door to door that are
competitive to those of direct road transport. The objective of the project is not to
build and@or test physical prototypes of transport system components. The evaluation
objectives ill cover the performance of the system in important dimensions such as
business economic costs, socio-economic costs, transport -uality, and environmental
impact in absolute terms ill be compared ith road transport. $n addition to these
dimensions, the evaluation ill also cover market share predictions of the system
under various conditions for the entire market and for market segments. !ne set of
conditions ill represent the prevailing transport policy conditions together ith
present external conditions. !ther sets ill represent changes likely to take place in
7uropean transport policy. The objectives related to implementation strategies lead us
to suggest the analysis of problems of market entry of key actors, pricing problems,
effects of cost internalization, and system coordination, and to suggest strategies,
hich may contribute to reducing such problems. The geographical scope of the
system is intra-7uropean freight flos capable of being moved by the load units of
the system. This, of course, includes inter-continental freight flos as long as they are
moved in 7urope and can be moved by the load units of the proposed system.
.. Promotion of a ne/ -eneration of "ntermo#al Transport Services an#
&perators (PR&M&T"0
6R!M!T$E is the 0th :rameork 6rogramme research *#ec 'FFG H 2ug
'FFF+, hich identifies possibilities for intermodal freight transport for rather short
distances and small shipments. The idea behind the 6R!M!T$E project is the
folloing, for short distances; 6R!M!T$E %onsortium decided to investigate on this
issue because according to the results of the $E project, the largest potential of
intermodal transport lies in the market for short distance transportation. Coever,
intermodal transport has so far not achieved a considerable market penetration in that
segment. This is caused both by operational and by technical constraints. The small
shipment issue has been chosen by the 6R!M!T$E %onsortium since according to
the field surveys carried out in $E and 1!)$E, intermodal transport is mostly used
for full loads. The necessary logistical structures for consolidated loads do not seem
to be met by the most of the intermodal services supplied. Coever, future logistical
trends ill have the impact that shipment sizes ill become smaller and that
shipments have to be done more often in a smaller size. :or this market segment
intermodal transport has to adapt to the re-uirements of the transport of small
shipments, if the market share should rise. 7xpress transportation involves the hole
transportation process, from consignor to consignee, in a manner as fast as is
economically possible, on a predetermined delivery schedule and at predetermined
prices. The carrier provides door-to-door carriage of the shipment and it implies that
only one party *consignor or consignee+ is liable for the hole transportation process.
2s far as speed of express transportation is concerned, in a 7uropean context,
international express delivery ould take from less than one day up to three days,
depending on the price off the service, the distance involved and the access to the
places of origin and destination.
4ith the goal of sitching long-distance freight from road transport,
6R!M!T$E targeted opportunities and barriers for the ne generation of door-to-
door multimodal transport logistical services. 9e types of coordination beteen
service providers in the logistical chain ere proposed. &uggestions, including the
deregulation of transport market and setting up joint operations beteen shippers and
transport providers, ere valuable for constructing a ne market frameork. The
tools and methodologies suggested in $E are useful to elaborate the technological,
spatial, economic and institutional improvements to the existing logistic organizations
in favor of sea motorays. The demonstrators from #=# ill play a model role to
help transport users integrate sea motorays in their logistic chains. The
organizational improvements suggested by 6R!M!T$E helped set up a ne market
frameork for shifting cargo traffic to sea motorays.
Reso*rces1
'. !lof 6ersson, 6atrik 8ososki, #evelopment and evaluation of dispatching strategies for
the $6&$- 2)A system, (lekinge Tekniska CIgskola@T78 =??J
=. Khaomin Khang, Modernising 7uropean short sea shipping links, 9eptune, 7uropean
%ommunities, (elgium, =??J
/. LLL, %ollege partners ith maritime shipping company, 7xec#igital, 2ugust 9es,..&.,
/? 2ugust =??<
0. LLL, $ntermodal corridors for freight transport in 7urope based on shortsea shipping,
6roposal summary
M. LLL, 6ioneering efforts to deploy 1ean &ix &igma in maritime shipping operations featured
in Marine, 9es 1inthicum, M#, 9ovember ', =??J
J. LLL, The motorays of the sea "6reparing the future, Ministerial %onference on the
Motoray of the &ea, 1jubljana, &lovenia, =0 Banuary =??J, conclusions adopted by the
conference.
<. http;@@.onr.navy.mil@sciNtech@
G. http;@@.motorola.com@content.jspOglobal!bject$dP/?GG
F. http;@@.maritime-safety.org@
'?. http;@@cordis.europa.eu@transport@src@ipsi.htm

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%ristina 9istor, drd., .niversitatea MaritimQ din %onstanRa, tel. ?<=JF?//FJ, e-mail; nistor.cristinaSgmail.com