The rapidly changing world determines changes in the business processes. Logistics and transport are the areas facing constant changes. Therefore, an important point is to analyse the current problems of logistics and transport within the context of the changing environment. For many years, the experts of the Dept of Logistics and Transport Management of the Faculty of Transport Engineering from Vilnius Gediminas Technical University have been pursuing research both, in the Baltic Sea Region (BSR) in Lithuania and foreign countries. This research has been directed toward improvements to logistics and the entire supply chain in pursuit of economic, social and ecological competitiveness, an increase in the competitiveness and attractiveness of the transport system in the context of sustainable development, the impact of this system on the economic and social welfare of society, an increase in the competitiveness and attractiveness of the transport sector of improving the legal framework and the application of innovative technologies (including IT) in the transport sector aimed at implementing economic and social cohesion goals. The article deals with some of the key issues of the above introduced research.

Over the recent years, the use of containers in the transport system has dramatically increased. The rise of world containerisation is the result of the interplay of macroeconomic, microeconomic and policy-oriented factors. World trade is facilitated through the elimination of trade barriers and the liberalisation and deregulation of markets. Market liberalisation revealed a demand for enhancing the development of logistics services throughout the world. In the conceptual metamorphosis of the transportation system, cargo movements are viewed in light of the total distribution system. Producers, commodity shippers, ocean, air and land carriers, ports, logistics managers, freight forwarders and consignees are involved in such a total system. The physical distribution of cargo, then, involves an integrated logistics system. This article examines of changes in the transport system that occurred during the last decades because of the invention and application of containers. Moreover, an economic model of evaluating the logistic system based on container transportation is discussed.

Over the recent years, the usage of containers has dramatically increased; subsequently, port container terminals annually serve more and more intensive flows, which leads to the necessity to find the ways of increasing terminal performance in order to achieve that a growing number of containers would be expeditiously served. The minimization of container handling duration in a terminal would reduce the total transportation time and create preconditions for an increase in the efficiency of the transport chain. The article deals with the above introduced problem on the basis of research on container handling operations applying different technologies when the objective function is the optimization of the container handling cycle that includes assessing the parameters of terminal technical systems and determining the most rational container handling technology. For this purpose, the system of the factors directly influencing the container handling cycle and expert assessment estimating the weight of each factor of the overall handling duration have been determined. With reference to the obtained results and adapted multi-attribute assessment method COPRAS-G, the evaluation of traditional terminal technologies was performed thus determining the most efficient technology under supposed conditions.

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