Bruce Barnard/Special Correspondent | Apr 17, 2012 10:48AM EDT
Drewry Research and CargoSmart are joining forces to publish a wider range of key performance indicators aimed at helping importers and exporters to benchmark their ocean carriers’ service levels.
The new KPIs will monitor the performance of the physical port-to-port shipping operation, as well as the performance of commercial processes, as well as regional inland transport performance and port dwell times.
“The new container KPIs will add value as they will measure performance at the box-level, which is more important for shippers than at the ship-level,” Philip Damas, director at London-based Drewry, said in announcing the partnership.
“Measuring KPIs is critical for shippers to optimize their business operations,” Kim Le, director of CargoSmart North America, said in a statement. CargoSmart is a software provider and one of three companies operating ocean shipping portals to manage and track shipments, submit booking requests and handle documentation.
Drewry this month will announce details of a new quarterly report incorporating the additional KPIs. The company, which introduced independent carrier schedule reliability KPIs and spot container freight rate benchmarks in 2006, said the new KPIs would bring “more transparency, accountability and comparability in other key aspects of container carrier performance.”
“Drewry’s reporting over recent years has indicated that only 60 percent to 70 percent of containership sailings arrived on time, with carriers only recently deciding to provide a guaranteed standard of service with compensations for delays,” Damas said. “In a service industry, we believe it is important that buyers know what standards of service and performance they can expect from the carrier industry — whether good or bad — and what it means in terms of value-for-money and the cost of failed performance.”
Many large shippers already measure various performance metrics for the carriers they use, Drewry said. But it says its new industry KPI will provide a comparative, standard assessment of container shipping as a whole “and of carriers unknown to shippers, which is not otherwise available even to large shippers.”
Contact Bruce Barnard at brucebarnard47@hotmail.com.
