Towards Analytics-Enabled Efficiency Improvements in Maritime Transportation: A Case Study in a Mediterranean Port

Abstract

The current digitalization trend, the increased attention towards sustainability, and the spread of the business analytics call for higher efficiency in port operations and for investigating the quantitative approaches for maritime logistics and freight transport systems. Thus, this manuscript aims at enabling analytics-driven improvements in the port transportation processes efficiency by streamlining the related information flow, i.e., by attaining shorter time frames of the information and document sharing among the export stakeholders. We developed a case study in a mid-sized European port, in which we applied Process Mining (PM)—an emerging type of business analytics—to a seven-month dataset from the freight export process. Four process inefficiencies and an issue that can jeopardize the reliability of the time performance measurements were detected, and we proposed a draft of solutions to cope with them. PM enabled enhancements in the overall export time length, which might improve the vessels’ turnover and reduce the corresponding operational costs, and supported the potential re-design of performance indicators in process control and monitoring. The results answer the above-mentioned calls and they offer a valuable, analytics-based alternative to the extant approaches for improving port performance, because it focuses on the port information flow, which is often related to sustainability issues, rather than the physical one.

Big data and artificial intelligence in the maritime industry: a bibliometric review and future research directions

“…Zerbino et al (2018b) suggested further development of the process mining tool; for example, by expanding the methodology into an online PCS evaluation tool. Investigation of the effects of process mining on port performance indicators and related costs could be another future research agenda (Zerbino et al 2019). Future research should also examine strategies to overcome the barriers of PCS implementation (Zerbino et al 2018a).…”

Ports Digitalization Level Evaluation

“…Available publications present the assessment of ports’ efficiency and measure their performance [ 52 , 65 ]. Brooks [ 66 ] conducted a comprehensive review of the literature on performance measurement, both at the company level (public and private) and at the program level and explored what constructs may be suitable to measure the performance of devolution programs for ports from a strategic management perspective.…”

“…Recommendations and concrete measures to achieve digitalization and connectivity have been proposed [ 63 , 65 , 71 ]. Fruth and Teuteberg [ 5 ] noticed that there is still a lack of theoretical and empirical work, as well as explanatory approaches to appropriate recommendations for action and restructuring in the area of digitalization in maritime logistics.…”

Managing Maritime Container Ports’ Sustainability: A Reference Model

“…The development of a composite sustainability index of port regions for management purposes [12]; -Information systems such as Port Community Systems [14].…”