TAF PUBLISHING

Container transportation had become an important way for carrying cargo in the world because containers can be transported between ports and delivered to destinations conveniently by intermodal services. Container transportation is accomplished not only by ships but also by various handling operations at terminals and other vehicles such as trains and trucks. In the liner shipping industry, container terminals play important roles responsible for handling, storage, and loading/ unloading containers at the shipside. In response to handling the large number of containers brought by modern huge ships, most container terminals have been devoting to improve operating efficiency and the capacity of facilities and enhance the whole service quality to keep their competitiveness in the shipping industry. Therefore, the efficiency of terminal operations is crucial because the results can directly reflect the status of the terminal operation and indicate the direction for operators to take measures for improvement. This study intended to evaluate the efficiency of container terminals in the same port. The Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach was used to measure the efficiency of CCR and BCC models to examine the relative efficiency and the scale efficiency. We defined container terminals in a Taiwanese port as the decision-making units (DMUs), and the items used in the models included six input items (number of berths, length of berth, design draft, number of gantry cranes, annual rental, and container terminal area) and five output items (container throughput, number of services, number of vessels in below 5500 TEU, number of vessels in 5500-10000TEU and number of vessels in more than 10,000 TEU) to estimate the efficiency of terminals. The result indicates useful information, which is helpful for terminal operators to adjust their input items for reducing waste and increase the output in an appropriate direction.