Эмпирическое исследование пропускной способности российских контейнерных терминалов на основе методологии анализа границ производственных возможностей

Relevance of the study
More than 90% of world trade is carried by sea transport. Therefore, ports are the strategic infrastructure facilities and the basis of international trade, they plays a key role in international logistics chains and acts as trade facilitators in the regions and countries.
During the last decades the containerized trade volumes experienced a sharp rise from 224 million TEU in 2000 to 793 million TEU in 2018 because of the ability to containerize different type of goods. It led to the establishment of new container terminals on the main trade routes and as a consequence, increase in the fierce competition for customers with neighborhood terminals.
Aware of that facts, the port authorities showed great interest in effective port management. Thus, they are constantly looking for strategies to meet growing needs through the rational utilization of their current resources. Port efficiency is an indicator of an appropriate port development and right management decisions, and therefore monitoring and comparing one port with other ports in terms of their efficiency has become an integral part of competitive analysis in many countries.
If the container terminals could properly conduct the evaluation of their performance in terms of the track of operational efficiency change in their activities, it would generate valuable information for terminal management for their further steps in the strategy development or in resource utilization.
Managerial problem
Due to the change in the demand for certain type of cargo, there are a decrease in the throughput flow in ports which are dependent on non-container cargo. Therefore, the management faces the tough long-term challenge to increase the throughput flow in these ports with falling demand on the main cargo of the port. One of the possible solution is to re-profiling the port into container terminal, since there is a long-term trend of containerization of goods, and there is also a lack of container handling capacity at current ports in Russia in a short term. Therefore, the relevant task of this study is to define what infrastructure characteristics a terminal should possess in order to be re-profiled.
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Research gap
Although many studies have already analyzed the technical efficiency of container terminals using different set of variables and on the various geographical scope, most of them were focused on the general performance analysis of container terminals and horizontal comparison of estimated efficiency scores among selected observations. In addition to that, examined articles are ended up with the identification of the drivers which impact the technical efficiency and no further research was made. After thorough analysis of academic papers, no study has been found that identified the infrastructure variables which influence the handling capacity of the terminal. Therefore, this research is aimed at filling this gap by proposing the infrastructure characteristics which impact the handling capacity of the container terminal. Moreover, the decision support tool for the authorities of container terminals will be proposed which defines the parameters of terminal’s infrastructure characteristics needed for the reaching certain empirical capacity of the terminal.
Research goal and objectives
The study is aimed to make a design and application of analytical models for measuring an impact of the infrastructural variables on the container terminals handling capacity.
In order to cover research gap and meet the research goal the analysis of port efficiency concept should be conducted. According to the issues investigated in the frame of port efficiency, the following objectives are set:
1. Operationalization of the concept of container terminal’s handling capacity;
2. Collection of relevant empirical database;
3. Identification of container terminal infrastructure variables influencing handling
capacity;
4. Modeling of relationship between throughput of the container terminals and their
infrastructure variables;
5. Estimation of alternative production frontier models for container terminal’s handling
capacity;
6. Calculation of technical efficiency and empirical capacity for container terminals;
7. Comparative analysis of the results;
8. Analysis of relation between technical efficiency of the terminals and the infrastructure
variables.
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Research questions
In order to meet the research objectives stated above, the following research questions should be answered:
1. What is the relationship between container terminal’s handling capacity and infrastructure variables?
2. What should be understood under container terminal handling capacity concept?
3. What are container terminal infrastructure variables influencing handling capacity?
4. What is relationship between technical efficiency of terminal handling capacity and its
infrastructure characteristics?
Research design
Stage 1. Operationalization of the container terminal handling capacity concept and identification of container terminal infrastructure variables influencing handling capacity;
Stage 2. Causal modeling of relationship between the container terminal throughput and its infrastructure variables;
Stage 3. Construction of the alternative production frontier models;
Comparative analysis of technical efficiency of the container terminals handling capacity;
Stage 4. Investigation of relationship between technical efficiency of terminal handling capacity and its infrastructure characteristics.
To answer the questions raised above and meet the goals that were set, quantitative methods would be used. Among them, the cause and effect analysis will be conducted for the modeling of relation between throughput of the container terminals and their infrastructure variables. Then the production technology modeling will be made in order to construct the alternative production frontier. After that, production frontier analysis should be made for the comparative analysis of the technical efficiencies. Lastly, the model of relation between technical efficiency of the terminals and the infrastructure characteristics would be estimated.