Assessment of Logistics Operations for International Short-Sea Express: A Case Study in Taiwan

In e-commerce activities, cross-border logistic companies’ participation ensures goods are delivered to customers smoothly, reliably, and flexibly with cost-efficient freight transport. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the logistics operations of International Short-Sea Express (ISSE). Based on the relevant literature and the operating characteristics of ISSE, the logistic requirement attributes (LRAs) in ISSE are first investigated. A grey relational analysis approach is then developed to weight those LRAs. Based on these weights, a Revised Quality Function Deployment (RQFD) model is constructed to translate these LRAs weights into the weights of logistic operation attributes (LOAs) on the customer side of ISSE. Finally, based on both the weights of customer-side LOAs and operator-side LOAs, a House of Quality model for the logistics operations of ISSE is proposed. In addition, to validate the proposed models, the ISSE operators in the Port of Taipei were empirically investigated. Results illustrate that ocean freight forwarders (OFFs) pay the most attention to no cargo damage or loss (7.47%), the correctness of cargo delivery (7.04%), proactively providing shipping information (6.63%), punctuality of cargo delivery (6.59%), and convenient delivery procedures (6.57%). In addition, the proposed RQFD model illustrated the top 5 out of 15 LOAs as the most crucial for logistics operations for ISSE: work schedule (11.49%), file processing (11.35%), cargo consolidation (10.28%), public relations (9.49%), and contract management (7.87%). The results provide practical information for ISSE operators and related government authorities to make improvement policies in ISSE development. Furthermore, the proposed RQFD model may offer methodological references to relevant research in service quality models.