• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.23-44
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• 2022

Purpose - Recent issues such as vessel enlargement, strengthening of environmental regulations, and port smartization are expected to increase costs and intensify competition in the port industry. In the new normal era, when external growth has reached its limit, the efficient operation of ports is becoming indispensable for achieving sustainable growth. This study aims to identify the determinants of inefficiency by examining the cost structure and efficiency of container terminals in Korea and furthermore propose the political implications to derive the maximization of efficiency. Design/methodology - This study estimates the cost function of container terminal operators and identifies the efficiency of container terminals using stochastic cost frontier (SCF) in the first stage. In the second step, the SCF results are compared with the data envelopment analysis (DEA). Last, this paper proposes efficiency determinants on container terminal operation to establish appropriate strategies. Out of the 29 container terminal operators in South Korea, 13 operators participated in the survey. The translog cost function was estimated utilizing a total of 116 observations collected over the 2007-2017 period. Findings - Empirical analysis shows that economies of scale exist in Korea's container ports, which provides a rationale for the government's policy to establish the global terminal operator by integrating small terminal operators to enhance competitiveness. In addition, as a result of the determinants analysis, container throughput, weight of direct employment costs, and labour cost share have positive effects on improving cost efficiency, while inefficiency increases as the length of quay increases. More specifically, cost efficiency improves as the proportion of direct employment costs to outsourcing service costs increases. Originality/value - This study contributes to analyzing the inefficiency factors of container terminals through efficiency analysis with respect to a cost function. In addition, this study proposes the practical and political implications, such as establishing a long-term manpower pool, the application of the hybrid liner terminal system, and the construction of a statistical data system, to improve the cost inefficiency of terminal operators.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.61-82
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• 2006

In order to cope with improvement of labor cost and cargo volume, Korean ports, especially Busan port, are in need of many new facilities. Of course, current facilities should be fully used, and at the same time it needs to make every effort to maximize its productivity as well as cost saving. To this end, this study has decided to focus on automatic yard operation suitable to the domestic container terminal environments, making a survey of many advanced container terminals, trying to find out their common factors, and finally suggesting several alternatives based on the combination of these factors. Also, this study has suggested the present value of initial investment and operating cost by alternative, and at the same time presented the relationship between cargo handling volume and cost/revenue of the optimal alternative, so that it may be of help in decision making.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.75-86
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• 2008

A remarshalling is one of the operational strategies considered importantly at a port container terminal for the fast ship operations and heighten efficiency of slacking yard. The remarshalling rearranges the containers scattered at a yard block in order to reduce the transfer time and the rehandling time of container handling equipments. This Paper deals with the rearrangement problem, which decides to where containers are transported considering time value of each operations. We propose the mixed integer programming model minimizing the weighted total operation cost. This model is a NP-hard problem. Therefore we develope the heuristic algorithm for rearrangement problem to real world adaption. We compare the heuristic algorithm with the optimum model in terms of the computation times and total cost. For the sensitivity analysis of configuration of storage and cost weight, a variety of scenarios are experimented.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.35 no.7
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• pp.589-596
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• 2011

Terminal market has rapidly crashed and market rates have taken a sharp plunge. The substantial throughput decrease resulted from the world economic downturn has been a finishing blow to the terminal operators in Busan. Every terminal operator is taking cost saving as its first priority and accelerating structural reform and downsizing. Under the desperate situation, the need of effective cost analysis would be highly required to effectively control operation cost and to develop new services to satisfy the different needs of the customers. Furthermore, terminal operators could reduce unnecessary activities and concentrate their resource on the more cost-effective process through the operation cost analysis. In order to suggest a new framework of the cost control of container terminals, this paper seeks to analyze terminal costs based on ABC approach by processing actual data.

• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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• 2011.05a
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• pp.263-268
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• 2011

There are many exclusive freight cars in railway freight transportation system. Gondola is one kind of freight cars. Gondolas have a role to carry bulk-type cargo such as coals and ores. A few problems are occurring due to exclusive freight cars. Operation company has redundant freight cars because exclusive freight cars can carry limited items. And purchasing cost of freight cars is higher and higher because of irregular bid. Operation efficiency of gondola is very low because return time of gondola is much longer than that of container car. In this study, we analysed the introduction effect of hopper-type container for through transit. First, we identified the characteristics of spatial distribution on freight stations. And we provided the effect of hopper-type container in terms of operation efficiency, cost reduction, new demand excavation and image enhancement of eco-friendly railroad.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Navigation and Port Research Conference
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• 2004.11a
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• pp.253-260
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• 2004

In these days, 8000TEU container ship service launches in shipping service at latest based on the economy of scale, unit cast related with ship operation on ocean decreases in proportion to increase of ship scale and mega ship over 10,000TEU is on planning. This paper is analyzed the economic efficiency for reduction qf calling port in the operation cost, port chnrge, feeder cost, etc by an empirical analysis.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Navigation and Port Research Conference
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• 2004.04a
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• pp.413-419
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• 2004

In these days, 8,000TEU container ship service launches in shipping service at latest based on the economy of scale, unit cost related with ship operation on ocean decreases in proportion to increase of ship scale and mega ship over 10,000TEU is on planning. Most of the exiting researches have performed from the perspective of total operation cost from mega port to mega port. However, the purpose of this paper is to estimate economic efficiency by ports selected Hub port from total cost point of view, operation cost, port charge, feeder cost, etc.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.297-306
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• 2003

As the competition in the liner shipping industry is becoming fiercer, the shipping company is trying to find the way to keep the best competitive position by reducing the cost level as low as possible and offering the best quality of service to their customer. In order to achieve this goal, the selection of port and terminal that have the best quality of service and cost effective structure is essential for the shipping line, where they can only have a chance to save the money. In this context, the paper compares three European container terminals in order to understand the factors that have to be considered in the decision making process for the selection of terminal. And its advantages and disadvantages of each type of container terminal operation system were analyzed from the liner shipping company's point of view in terms of cost, time, flexibility, stability, hinterland connection, geographical position and terminal productivity. It is obvious that the cost factors are very important for liner shipping company to select their terminal. However, there might be even more important factors than the cost factors, such as quality of port and terminal service, mutual trust, and possibility of future development.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.35 no.9
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• pp.765-776
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• 2011

For container shipping company, fuel oil prise is a considerable expense. Since 2008, fuel oil prises have risen dramatically. An increasing fuel oil price in container shipping, in the short term, is only partially compensated through surcharges and may affect earnings negatively. This study discusses the impact of an increasing fuel oil price and capital costs for vessels on the Asia-Europe trade of 'H' Shipping Company. According to the result of 'H' carrier's operation in 2008, there were no cost differences between 8 and 9 vessels operations in case of fuel oil price with USD 169/tons while adopting USD 31,818 as a fixed cost. We can expect that the fuel oil price will not go lower than USD 200/Ton on the basis of current high oil price phenomenon. When the fuel oil price is over USD 200/ton, 9 vessel operation is more economic than 8 vessel operation even if the fixed cost is over USD 35,000.

• Journal of Fisheries and Marine Sciences Education
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.262-272
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• 2015

The aim of this study is to analysis factors that determine the competitiveness of container ports using the KJ and AHP methods. For this, 54 detailed attributing factors were identified both by previous studies and port users. 24 attributing factors were identified by a group of port experts. also, These were grouped 18 detailed attributing factors into 6 attributing factors by a group of port experts using the KJ method. These were made into a model of hierarchical structure with 3 levels, taking 1 goal factor, 6 evaluation factors and 18 detailed evaluation factors. The collected date of questionnaires were analyzed by a group of port experts using the AHP method. The analysis result of the evaluation factors in container port shows that port cargo volume is the most important factor, followed by port location, port cost, port service, port facility and port management. The analysis results of detailed evaluation factors in container port shows that import and export cargo volume is the most important factor, followed by transshipment cargo volume, distance from main trunk, cargo handling cost, distance from the point of importing and exporting, speediness of cargo handling, stability of cargo handling, vessel/cargo cost in port entry and leaving, punctuality in port entry and leaving, number and length of berth, collateral service cost, terminal area, hinterland accessibility, ability of terminal operation company, front depth of berth, etc.