Logistics services in ports - efficiency increase by commited service descriptions to design intermodal transport chains

Intermodal maritime transport chains comprise a variety of different logistics services, e.g. transport, handling, stocking, picking, repacking, packaging, tracking and tracing. Mainly the logistics services in ports cover a wide range of different processes and customized activities, depending on the types of cargo, the means of transport, origins, destinations and ports to be considered. Due to a large variety of alternatives the design of intermodal transport chains including port services and sea transports is a time consuming, expensive process that requires special knowledge and remarkable effort. To improve this, in particular to reduce required time and costs, an automatic computer-assisted application for the design of intermodal transports including port services may be considered. Premises for an automated design support are transparent processes and standardized descriptions of logistics services (committed service descriptions). The project IMOTRIS (Intermodal Transport Routing Information System) aims to design an internet application capable to support an automatic design of intermodal transports including the automatic ordering of logistics services in ports. The IMOTRIS project is funded by the German government. The project consortium consists of partners from industry, Baltic ports and academia. The Institute of Maritime Logistics (author) is (among other research tasks) responsible for project modules which focus on the development of committed service descriptions and process modelling in ports. The paper is structured into 4 sections. The section 1 gives a short introduction to logistics processes and services in ports and their particular characteristics. Section 2 outlines the potentials and requirements to improve efficiency of designing intermodal transports including logistics services in ports by standardization in offer and order phase (committed service descriptions). Furthermore this section shows current approaches in research and industry for the development of committed service descriptions. Section 3 demonstrates an approach and results of the ongoing research project IMOTRIS. Section 4 addresses conclusions and further needs of research and international cooperation.