Cheng-Chi Chung

Direct shipping across the Taiwan Strait: flag selections and policy issues

The restriction on direct shipping across the Taiwan Strait under which ships registered in Taiwan were banned from calling at China’s ports might have restricted the expansion of the Taiwanese flagged fleet. The cross-strait direct shipping link was established since the Cross-strait Sea Transport (CST) Agreement was signed in 2008. According to the Agreement, only ships owned and registered on either side of the Taiwan Strait or registered in Hong Kong may, with due approval, engage in direct cross-strait carriage of cargos and passengers. The aim of this study is to find the optimal flag selection for Taiwanese shipping companies under the provisions of the CST Agreement. The Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP) method is applied to find the preferred registry location among Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China. Sensitivity Analysis is also applied to test how criteria weights influence three alternative hierarchies. The results show Taiwan is the lowest priority with an unchangeable position in flag selection because Taiwanese national fleets mainly suffered higher operational costs. A lower tax rate and appropriate financial systems are therefore recommended in revising relevant shipping policies. Furthermore, to assist shipping companies to obtain China’s approval is also helpful to inspire ships flag back.

An Evaluation of Containership Registrations in Taiwan: Application of the Grey Relation Analysis Model

To strengthen competitiveness, many shipowners have shifted their vessels’ registrations to open registers as flag of convenience (FOC) vessels. The tendency of flagging out in Taiwan is more serious. This paper adopts the analytic hierarchy process and grey relation analysis model to evaluate the relative attractiveness of different types of registers to containership corporations in Taiwan. The preferences of registry locations are also compared and analyzed. The study finds that the FOC locations of Panama and Liberia are the most preferred locations of vessel registrations for containership corporations in Taiwan, followed by the quasi-FOC locations of Singapore and Hong Kong. Other traditional maritime countries and Taiwan are the final options. Based on the findings of this study, some suggestions are proposed to the government as a reference in revising relevant shipping policies.

Evaluation of Suppliers with Grey Relational Analysis

Many processes are involved in managing the supply chain to expedite the flow of information and materials. The Supply Chain Council developed a Supply Chain Operations Reference Model (SCOR) as a cross-industry reference model for supply chain management, which identifies five major supply chain processes: plan, source, make, deliver, and return. One of the subprocesses in the source process is identifying suppliers. In modern management, a company tries to establish a long-term relationship with its supplier to ensure its stable source and therefore evaluating supplier has become even more critical than ever in gaining strategic advantage in supply chain management. In this paper, we going to propose a supplier evaluatio n model based on grey relational analysis which has been extensively applied in various fields including decision making.

Exploring the critical success factor to the ferry transport service in short sea shipping

Along with the progress of society, people pay more attention to life quality and have more time for leisure activities. While ferry transport in short sea shipping has relative advantage of economic price, but disadvantage of lower speeds which has resulted in it being ignored for a long time. Firstly, based on factor analysis of survey questionnaires, this study aims to investigate determinants of decisions to be used by ferry transport in short sea shipping. Secondly, this study discusses the gap between expectations and perceptions of ferry transport characteristics. Further, results of gap analysis make a contribution to understanding the difference between supply and demand sides of ferry transport. It is noteworthy that the provision of free food and beverages has become one of the most critical measures for improving the service level of ferry transport. Finally, this study provides some corresponding reference suggestions about customised service for ferry providers.

AN INTERVAL-VALUED FUZZY NUMBER APPROACH FOR SUPPLIER SELECTION

Supplier assessment in supply chain management and electronic marketplaces plays an important role in the business transaction. Many methods have been proposed to deal with the supplier selection problems. Some of them are based on fuzzy set theory. However, traditional fuzzy numbers cannot precisely express the vagueness in the decision process. In this paper, we are going to propose a new fuzzy multiple criteria decision making model based on interval-valued fuzzy numbers to tackle the supplier selection problem in the circumstances where uncertainty is introduced. Usually, fuzzy numbers are employed to express uncertainty. For a fuzzy number, the degree of the membership is a crisp number whereas the degree of the membership for an interval-valued fuzzy number is an interval. To grasp the vagueness more precisely, we employ interval-valued fuzzy numbers to represent the ratings and weights of the evaluation instead of traditional fuzzy numbers. One of the merits of our method compared to the traditional fuzzy methods is that our method can express the uncertainty more precisely in the evaluation process. Beside, we propose a new ranking method for intervalvalued fuzzy numbers.

Containership Flag Selection: The Opening of Direct Shipping between Taiwan and China

The signature of the cross-strait sea transport (CST) Agreement in 2008 has not only established the cross-strait direct shipping link, but also lifted the ban on the involvement of Taiwanese flagged ships to call at China’s ports. This paper focuses on the flag selection for Taiwanese container shipping companies under the provisions of the CST Agreement, and embraces the empirical investigation based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Grey Relation Analysis (GRA) with the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). The results show Hong Kong is the optimal choice rather than China and Taiwan. Although cross-strait shipping is highly controlled by both sides of the strait, economic factors are still taken seriously in commercial activities. Further, to assist shipping companies to get direct shipping approvals from China and revising a package of financial measures under current shipping policies are recommended for the Taiwanese government.

Applying Hybrid Grey Models in Analyzing Tonnage Growth Trends in Bulk Shipping Among China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan

The development of bulk shipping is deeply affected by global economic prosperity or adversity. China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan (CH&T) are not only the main suppliers of bulk carriers (bulkers), but also the major trading countries or areas in the world. The development of deadweight tonnages (DWTs) in these areas will significantly influence global trade. This paper begins with the supply side, using the latest 15 years of statistics from the Institute of Shipping Economics and Logistics to analyze the current development status of the bulk shipping market among CH&T. Further, four GM(1,1) models of grey theory are adopted to analyze the developmental trends of bulkers. The results show that, not only has the DWTs of the world been increasing, but also that in CH&T in the past few years. Second, after China and Taiwan became members of the World Trade Organization, the number of flagging-out vessels has been increasing more rapidly than the number of national vessels. Moreover, it can be said that DWTs will increase in China and Taiwan, but decrease in Hong Kong in the coming three years in terms of the growth trend. These findings will assist bulk shipping companies in making operational strategies, and government authorities in formulating supportive shipping policies.

Dynamic Analysis of Store-to-Store Delivery Service through Fuzzy Cognitive Map

The Internet enables many companies to use the Web to allow customers to configure specific order options tailored to the tastes and preferences of the customers. Hence, logistics management exposes the formerly latent logistics system in the economic activities and reveals the inner connections between parts of logistics activities. Store-to-store delivery service is one of the most important delivery systems in Taiwan. The authors establish an evaluation model to analyze and describe the store-to-store delivery using sensitivity model and fuzzy cognitive map. The results obtained can be used to help the manager formulate strategies and reduce risks as well.

An Analytic Approach for Synthesizing Comparison Matrices in AHP

In AHP, judgements of decision makers are represented by positive reciprocal matrices (pairwise comparison matrices) with ratio judgements representing the preference of a decision maker. Each decision makers opinion is characterized by a pairwise comparison matrix in the AHP. Under group decision environment, a group comparison matrix has to be drawn from the matrices of the members of the group as the consensus of the group. In 2001, Yeh, Kerng and Lin [11] proposed a goal programming method to synthesize the pairwise comparison matrices into a consensus matrix for the group. Yeh et al. proposed a generic algorithm to find a solution approximating the objective function proposed by them. In this paper, we are going to show that their formulation can be solved analytically and the optimal solution can be easily computed.