• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.261-266
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• 2015

Many of previous studies suggested that working capital management is an important component of firm's financial decision and efficient working capital management affects firms' profitability and it's value. Recently, Korean shipping firms have been suffering from financial distress by recession of shipping economy. In this point of view, this study tries to investigate the relationship between working capital management and shipping firm's profitability, using panel data on 46 Korean shipping firms for the period of 2004-2013. As result of panel regression, it proved that average payment period, inventory turnover, cash conversion cycle and operating cycle are significantly associated with firms profitabilities such as profit margin ratio and operating profit ratio, and the manager of shipping firm can increase firms profitability by more efficient working capital management. There are strong positive relationships between average payment period and operating cycle and firm's profitability. These results suggest that managers can create firm's value by increasing average payment period and operating cycle. Otherwise inventory turnover and cash conversion cycle have negative relationships with firm's profitability. It means that managers can increase firm's profitability by reducing these variables.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.5-13
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• 2018

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to look into some alternative for Korean shipping to overcome difficult situations in shipping, since then it is economic crisis at the end of 2000s. Research design, data, and methodology - The research method to be adopted is first to review theoretical overview about shipping cycle, and then examine difficult shipping situations and studies management aspect, which is to related to establishment of Korea Shipping Council. Results - The boom and bust situations in shipping market have been identified as result of economic crisis at the end of 2000s. Trade volumes have fallen and shipping tonnage has risen respectively. In practical terms, shipping industry has suffered from difficult situations, following to supply and demand of shipping market, and Korean shipping had to face hard time as well, according to lack of management ability of shipping company. Alternatively, it should be asked shipping forum like Korea Shipping Council. Conclusions - From situations of shipping markets since the end of 2000s, it is strongly asked that every parties got involved in shipping business should understand and share more expertise and knowledge of shipping market, which is finally related to decision- making process in shipping.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.57-66
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• 2018

Maritime industry is affected by outside factors significantly due to its derivative demand characteristics. However, the supply side can not react to these changes immediately and due to this uniqueness, maritime industry repeats the boom-bust cycle. Therefore the government itself needs to operate early warning system in order to monitor the market and notice the upcoming risks by setting up a system to prepare for the situations. In this research, signal approach is used to establish early warning system. Overall leading index is composed of crisis index that is based on BDI(Baltic Dry Index) and various leading indexes such as finance, economy, shipping and the others. As a result of computing overall leading index which is early warning system in maritime through signal approach, the index showed a high correlation coefficient with actual maritime risk index by difference of 4 months. Also, the result was highly accurate with overall leading index's QPS(Quadratic Probability Score) at 0.37.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.7-14
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• 2016

Unlike most researches that focus on single manufacturer or single buyer, this research studies the cooperation policy for two participants of supply chain such as single vendor and single buyer. Especially, this paper deals with single vendor-single buyer integrated-production inventory problem. If the buyer orders products, then the vendor will start to make products and then the products will be shipped from the vendor to the buyer many times. The buyer is supposed to order again when the buyer's inventory level hits reorder point during the last shipment and this cycle keeps repeated. The buyer uses continuous review inventory policy and customer's demand is assumed to be probabilistic. The contribution of this paper is to present a mixed approach and derive its cost function. The existing policy assumes that the size of shipping batch from single vendor to single buyer is increasing, called Type 1, or constant, called Type 2. In mixed approach, the size of shipping batch is increasing at the beginning part of the cycle, and then its size is constant at the ending part of the cycle. The number of shipping for Type 1 and Type 2 in a cycle in mixed approach is determined to minimize total cost. The relationship between parameters, for example, the holding cost per product, the set up cost per order, and the shortage cost per item and decision variables such as order quantity, safety factor, the number of shipments, and shipment increasing factor is figured out via sensitivity analysis. Finally, it is statistically proved that the mixed approach is superior to the existing approaches.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.46 no.4
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• pp.375-384
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• 2022

The shipping industry is cyclically impacted by complex variables such as various economic indicators, social events, and supply and demand. The purpose of this study was to analyze the operating profit of 13 Korean liner companies over 30 years, including the financial crisis of the late 1990s, the global financial crisis of the late 2000s, and the COVID-19 global pandemic. This study was conducted to also identify factors that impacted the profit ratio of Korea's liner shipping companies according to economic conditions. It was divided into ocean-going and short-sea shipping, reflecting the characteristics of liner shipping companies, and was analyzed by hierarchical multiple regression analysis. The time series data are based on the Korean International Financial Reporting Standards (K-IFRS) and comprise seaborne trade volume, fleet evolution, and macroeconomic indicators. The outliers representing the economic downturn due to social events were separately analyzed. As a result of the analysis, the China Container Freight Index (CCFI) positively impacted ocean-going as well as short-sea liner shipping companies. However, the Korean container shipping volume only impacted ocean-going liners positively. Additionally, world and Korea's GDP, world seaborne trade volume, and fuel price are factored in the operating profit of short sea liner shipping. Also, the GDP growth rate of China, exchange rate, and interest rate did not significantly impact both groups. Notably, the operating profitability of Korea's liner shipping shows an exceptionally high rate during the recessions of 1998 and 2020. It is paradoxical, and not correlated with the classical economic indicators. Unlike other studies, this paper focused on the operating profit before financial expenses, considering the complexity as well as difficulty in forecasting the shipping cycle, and rendered conclusions using relatively long-term empirical analysis, including three economic shocks.

• Proceedings of the Korean Operations and Management Science Society Conference
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• 1998.10a
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• pp.392-395
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• 1998

This paper suggests the“infinite-retailer model”to approximate expected backorders per cycle of the One-warehouse N-retailer distribution system where the warehouse holds back some of the replenishment quantity to satisfy retailer backorders at the end of the cycle through direct shipping to customers. The main objective is to show the functional relationship between the warehouse inventory and the expected backorders per cycle. We illustrate the relationship using a uniform demand case.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.1-15
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• 2015

During global recessions, such as the 2008 financial crisis, Korean shipping companies have been undergoing a liquidity crisis that is comparably worse than other shipping companies worldwide. One of the reasons behind this repetitive vicious cycle can be the lack of ability to foresee the future by analyzing and understanding the volatile shipping market. Traditionally, in order to assimilate the shipping market, larger Korean shipping companies have been purchasing market reports published by Europe-based research companies and shipping brokers, leading to a digital divide by company size. To resolve this issue, the Maritime Exchange Information Center (MEIC) has been publishing shipping market reports that include essential shipping information such as freight rates by different routes; commodity trends for iron ore, grain, and coal; ship-building trends for new-building, second-hand, and demolition markets; as well as bunker price and port congestion. This research was conducted to analyze the effectiveness of four variables-information usefulness, market reflection, information composition, and latest information-on information satisfaction. If the information satisfaction was found to be adequate, the analysis of actual proof was used to determine if the customers would be willing to purchase MEIC's report when it is chargeable. All the four variables were found to have positive effects on information satisfaction. In particular, latest information was found to directly affect the intention to purchase. Furthermore, high information satisfaction was related to the intention to purchase.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.69-74
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• 2012

Recent global supply chain, improving the efficiency of container shipping process is very important. In the overseas shipping of goods, the voyage of super containership is common to overcome amount of increasing cargo. Thus, container terminal managers make an experiment on the double cycle and dual cycle operation, which ship loading and unloading were carried out simultaneously, for maximizing the productivity of quay side. Yard Tractors(YTs) pooling methods also are introduced for increasing the efficiency of assignment of YTs. In this paper, we analyzed the efficiency of dual cycling through comparing existing pooling methods with the modified method for the dual cycling. We developed a simulation model using simulation analysis software, Arena. The result of experiment shown that the more dual cycling don't always increase the gross crane rate(GCR), which means productivity of quay cranes(QCs) per hour.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.87-104
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• 2022

Considering the complex structure and high volatility in the shipping market, it is important to investigate the connectedness amongst influencing factors. This study explores the dynamic relationship between supply-demand factors and shipping freight indices. We choose Capesize and Panamax in the bulk carrier market and use quarterly data of GDP, world fleet, BCI, and BPI from 1999 to 2021. Applying the wavelet analysis and wavelet Granger causality test, the simultaneous examination of co-movement and causality between two factors and the shipping market in both the time and frequency domains is achieved. We find that co-movement and causality vary across time and frequencies, thereby existing dynamic relationships between variables. Second, compared to multiple coherencies using demand and supply factors together, partial coherencies indicate noticeable causalities. It implies that analyzing demand and supply factors separately is essential. Finally, shipping freight indices show a high correlation with the demand factor in a good market and with the supply factor in a bad market. Generally, GDP positively leads shipping freights in the recovery phase while the world fleet negatively leads shipping freights in the downturn. The research is meaningful in that the rarely-applied wavelet analysis is adopted in the shipping market and that it gives a reasonable ground to explain the role of supply and/or demand factors in different phases of the market cycle.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.119-146
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• 2023

Purpose - As the severity of air pollution caused by the shipping industry is becoming evident, port authorities have started making efforts to reduce air pollutants. Considering the limitations of the currently implemented emission-control area (ECA) and vessel-speed reduction program (VSRP), which are narrow in the designation range and navigation behavior of ships, this study proposes an emission-control route (ECR) that can complement the aforementioned two environmental policies. Design/methodology - This study was conducted on Korea-China trade service routes (ports of call) of regular liners. This study employed vessel-specific data, which is from an automatic identification system (AIS), for 1,728 maritime transportations performed by 387 container vessels during one year (July 1, 2021, to June 30, 2022). Performing a scenario analysis, this study analyzed the effectiveness of reduced air-pollutant emissions. Findings - This study found that the implementation of ECRs could increase average voyage time by 12.38%-25.28% but reduced air-pollutant emissions by 29.02%-43.54%. Additionally, the increase in average voyage times reduces the anchorage time of ships outside ports, providing an incentive for ship operators to voluntarily participate in compliance with regulations, thereby contributing to the establishment of a virtuous cycle of air-environmental policies related to ships. Originality/value - This study aims to verify the policy effectiveness by designing an ECR scope for liner trade routes between Korea and China. Therefore, originality and the value of this study includes conceptualizing the ECR system, analyzing its environmental performance, and exploring new policies that can be implemented while complementing existing policies.