Key performance Indicators for Maritime Transport System: A Feasibility Study on Swedish Maritime System

Abstract

In the last years the overall trade between Sweden and rest of the world has increased dramatically according to UN. The development of foreign trade has motivated Swedish Authorities to have in-depth knowledge about the degree of accessibility of important locations in Sweden for containerized trade. In parallel with this development, Swedish Maritime Administration has stressed the importance of starting a study to find out some key performance indicators for accessibility. Thus, we will try to examine the accessibility concept in terms of only cost and time for container transportation in different transport relations between a number of places in Sweden and abroad. The aim of this study is to discover the possibility of having a solid methodology to monitor development of costs and time in the transport relations in order to gauge accessibility of defined locations. The research is exploratory and based on qualitative observations including interviews with related parties. Theoretical findings and results indicate that besides offering some basic benchmarking ways for the routes, companies and over time periods —touching many ocean freight providers to Sweden with this approach—, it is understood that having a clear indexing system in liner shipping by only looking to costs and times is not very feasible because of nature of container freight market. Another main problem is the poorness of feedbacks to the questionnaire that we have used to gather core data of the subject as only four of twenty three companies partly answered the questions. The recommendations cover broadening the factors of accessibility, some other data gathering methods, the ability of governments’ cooperation on information sharing and benefiting from large market research companies.