The worldwide orientation towards globalization and free trade created strong competition among international container terminals to attract more demand for container handing. Container terminals across the world are striving to enhance their market competitiveness, through introducing improvements in their quality of services as well as developing their management style. Management of business as a logistics chain is currently gaining momentum. Logistics is the process of planning, implementing and controlling the efficient and effective flow and storage of raw materials, in process inventory, finished goods, services and related information from points of origin to points of consumption taking into consideration conforming to customer requirements. Essential principles of logistics and supply chain management can be applied to many different business processes across a wide range of industries, including service industries. This is meant to assist in simulating business activities in a transparent and insightful fashion. In this research, the business of container handling service in Egypt is subjected to analysis based on the principles and generic components of logistics chains. This research aims at developing two logistics chains that simulate the activities performed by Alexandria Container Handling Company. The first is the inbound container handling chain and the second is the outbound container handling chain. Such chains include activities such as loading, unloading of containers, internal transport to container storage area, customs checking, loading to clients' modes, etc. The core of the research is to assess the quality of services provided by Alexandria Container Handling Company. Such assessment is based on the diagnostic analysis of the developed inbound and outbound logistics chains that assist in the identification of issues that might require improvements. It is also based on the analysis of a questionnaire completed by customers of the company. In designing the questionnaire, the research was guided by the developed logistics chains, which allowed thoughtful consideration of the processes involved in such business. The questionnaire allowed customers to state their perceptual assessment of current service criteria such as ease of doing business with the company, precision of information provided, regularity of services, safety, response time to requests, availability of support facilities, time spent to complete customs routine procedures, etc. The questionnaire was distributed and completed by two types of customers, the first represents navigation lines and the second are container brokers representing different customers that import or export containers through Alexandria port. Based on the above analysis, a diagnostic identification of strengths and weaknesses in Alexandria Container Handling Company was conducted. The paper concludes with proposing a set of policies and measures aiming at producing improvements to the operation of current logistics chains for this company in particular and to container handling companies in general. For the covering abstract see ITRD E126595.
Samenvatting