A influência das condições operacionais na pontualidade do transporte marítimo

Among the available cargo transport modes, Liner Shipping can be highlighted due to its importance to the globalization process and the exponential growth witnessed along the last decades, as effect of the attractive attributes of reliability, predictability, high capacity and low overall cost. Although punctuality is also considered as default in Liner Shipping, past data points to a different reality, especially on developing countries, a subject approached in several research in the area. In Brazil, Cabotage plays a significant role to the national logistics landscape, by adding a viable and efficient alternative to the road transport, the country’s main transport mode. However, due to poor port infrastructure and low efficiency from the major terminals, there are high operating cost and low schedule reliability. To evaluate how Brazilian port’s operational conditions affect strategic and tactical planning of a Cabotage Liner Shipping service, a discrete-event simulation model has been developed, aiming at the cabotage service of a large Brazilian shipping company over a year and the outcome data of the simulation were crosschecked against the company’s preestablished deterministic proforma. The results show several reliability issues, forcing the company to take speed variation countermeasures, which might not be the most financially attractive scenario. Another insight regards to under- or overstated variables in some port calls, leading to bad service quality as well as unnecessarily increasing the system costs. Ultimately, some necessary proforma changes have been identified, in order to enhance its reliability