Using DEA to Measure the Performance of Route Operations in a Liner Shipping Company

• Main Authors: Yu-Fang Lin, 林郁芳
• Other Authors: Pao-Long Chang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2001
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/38086418595923698177

碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 經營管理研究所 === 89 === Performance appraisals of individual business units within an organization is fundamental to design the company’s development plan and make related decisions, in addition to a reference of merit rewards. The liner shipping industry is always keen to be quite competitive as it is in the midst of structural changes such as high market centralization, formation of big strategic alliances and scale enlargement. Encountering such shifts in business practice, the route competitiveness mainly mentioned for operations cost is critical in the industry. How to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency for each route is then very important for any liner shipping company. Without using the traditional appraisal approaches of financial analysis or five-ratio indicators, this thesis applies a DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) approach to study the efficiency and effectiveness of twenty-four route services operated by a liner shipping company in Taiwan. Using various dynamic models, as well stable models of the DEA approach respectively, this thesis analyzed returns to scale and comparative weight of input and output factors for these routes. For the managerial purpose, this thesis also provides the direction and extent of improvement by means of the differential variable analysis of DEA approach. Compared with the practical result, it reveals that the outcome from the DEA approach is quite consistent with that of the traditional financial methods of measuring the effectiveness and efficiency of route operations. The better effectiveness and efficiency of route operations are, the higher unit profit reached and vice versa. It also shows that different weights relied on the importance of input and output factors selected in measuring the route operation performance. Some of them have to focus on the control of input factors, but some of them should concentrate to improve output factors. In the dynamic analysis demonstrating the variation of route effectiveness for a particular period, it indicates most of outbound routes have upgraded significantly, however, it also reflects route effectiveness dropped in some of inbound routes over the same period. Summarizing the empirical study, we conclude that the DEA approach is well applicable to measure operational performance of individual service routes of a liner shipping company. In addition to using the financial indicator to measure the operation performance, it is suggested to apply DEA approach as a powerfully supplementary tool, which assists to find out related management problems and provides the direction of improvement.