Maritime Load Dependent Lead Times - An Analysis

Traditionally, the maritime sector follows a very conservative approach towards sharing information and adopting information technology (IT) to stream-line logistic activities. Late arrivals of ships create problems especially with the trend to build large ships leading to peak loads of process steps and increased container lead times. Proposed solutions to fight congestion range from extend-ing port capacities to process optimization of parts of the maritime supply chain. The potential that lies in information sharing and integrated planning using IT has
received some attention, but mainly on the operational level concerning timely information sharing. Collaborative planning approaches for the maritime supply chain are scarce. The production industry already implemented planning and in-formation concepts. Problems related to the maritime supply chain have great similarities with those encountered in production. Inspired by supply chain planning systems, we analyze the current state of (collaborative) planning in the maritime transport chain with focus on containers. Regarding the problem of congestion, we particularly emphasize on load dependent lead times (LDLT) which are
well studied in production.