Reference ship selection for the on-time performance benchmarking of ships

摘要

The on-time performance of a ship is one of the major aspects of a ship's operational reliability. The establishment of proper benchmarking for it would help the ship's stakeholders to a considerable extent with respect to enhancement of the performance. This paper investigates and suggests a methodology for selection of a ship as a point of reference, so that improvement in the on-time performance of other ships could be achieved. The issue is addressed through comparative studies of ships, exclusively from an on-time performance viewpoint. The paper proposes a structure that would guide the development of a support system for improvement in the operational reliability of a ship. The on-time performance of a ship is expressed in terms of 12 primary attributes signifying the diverse aspects of its operational reliability. Four ships of like characteristics voyaging between Singapore and Japan are considered for the study and an assessor's objective and subjective responses to the attributes are collected for these ships. The fuzzy analytical hierarchy process is used to allot priority weights to all the attributes, and then an evidential reasoning procedure is applied to obtain the utility values of the ships. Based on the utility values, comparison is carried out and the best of the four ships is selected as the reference ship for the marine sector under investigation. The proposed framework would be useful for enhancement of the ship's operational efficiency, reliability and performance. It would also help the ship's stakeholders in terms of better scheduling and proper management of the ship's arrival at the destination harbour.