RECOMMENDATIONS TO ENHANCE DELIVERING AND RECEIVING CONTAINER PROCEDURE AT CONTAINER YARD IN VIETNAM CONTAINER SHIPPING JOINT STOCK COMPANY GREEN PORT

VIETNAM MARITIME UNIVERSITYSTUDENT NAME: HOANG BICH THAO DISSERTATION GLOBAL STUDIES AND MARITIME AFFAIRS RECOMMENDATIONS TO ENHANCE DELIVERING AND RECEIVING CONTAINER PROCEDURE AT CONTA

VIETNAM MARITIME UNIVERSITY

STUDENT NAME: HOANG BICH THAO

DISSERTATION GLOBAL STUDIES AND MARITIME AFFAIRS

RECOMMENDATIONS TO ENHANCE DELIVERING AND RECEIVING CONTAINER PROCEDURE AT CONTAINER YARD IN VIETNAM CONTAINER SHIPPING JOINT STOCK

COMPANY- GREEN PORT

VIETNAM MARITIME UNIVERSITY

STUDENT NAME: HOANG BICH THAO CLASS: GMA02

DISSERTATION GLOBAL STUDIES AND MARITIME AFFAIRS

RECOMMENDATIONS TO ENHANCE DELIVERING AND RECEIVING CONTAINER PROCEDURE AT CONTAINER YARD IN VIETNAM CONTAINER SHIPPING JOINT STOCK COMPANY- GREEN PORT

Supervisor: PHAM THI YEN

HAI PHONG – 2015

If violated, I am solely responsible for and bear the punishments of the Institution and University.

Student Name and Signature

Hoang Bich Thao

Firstly, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my advisor Pham Thi Yen and Tran ThiMinh Trang for the continuous support of my dissertation and related research, for their patience,motivation, and immense knowledge Their guidance helped me in all the time of research and writing

of this thesis I could not have imagined having a better advisor and mentor for my study

ACKNOWLEGEMENT ii

Table of Contents iii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS v

LIST OF TABLES vi

LIST OF FIGURES vii

INTRODUCTION 1

Neccessation 1

Research Object 2

Research Scope 2

Research Findings 2

CHAPTER I: Literature review 3

1.1 Overview of container yard (CY) 3

1.2 Main features of Container yard 3

1.3 CY planning 4

1.4 The methods of container arrangement in CY 5

1.6 The matters related to CY management 7

1.7 Regulations of delivering and receiving container 8

CHAPTER II: Dilivering and receiving container procedure at container yard in viconship-green Port 10

2.1 Overview of Viconship- Green Port 10

2.1.1 Features of Green Port 10

2.1.2 Main services 12

2.1.3 Organization 13

2.1.4 Business activities in Green Port 14

2.2.Overview of Container Yard 15

2.2.1 Facilities of CY 16

2.2.2 Organization 16

2.3 Delivering and receiving containers in CY 17

2.3.2 Delivering containers in CY 17

2.3.2 Receiving containers in CY 20

CHAPTER III: EVALUATION AND RECOMMENDATIONs TO Enhance Delivering and receiving container procedure at CY IN GREEN PORT 23

3.1.3 Threat 25

3.1.4 Opportunity 26

3.2 Recommendations to enhance delivering and receiving container procedure at Container yard in Vietnam Container Shipping Joint Stock- Green Port 27

3.2.1 Investment in CY planning and information technology 27

3.2.2 Training and developing human resource 28

3.2.3 Promotion 29

CONCLUSION 30

REFERENCES 31

appendices 32

CY Container Yard.

EIR Equipment interchange receipt

FCL Full Container Load

LCL Less- than- Container Load

CMC Container movement card

D/O Delivery order

Viconship Vietnam Container Shipping Cooperation

Table 1: Vehicles in CY 16 Table 2: SWOT 26

Figure 1: The 3D diagrams of Green Port 11

Figure 2: The 2D diagram of Green Port 11

Figure 3: Shipping way of Green Port 12

Figure 4: Organization of Green Port 13

Figure 5: The cargo volume through Green Port in 2014 14

Figure 6: The cargo volume through Green Port (2010-9 first months of 2015) 15

Figure 7: Vehicles in CY 16

Figure 8: CY organization 17

Figure 9: Delivering process 17

Figure 10: Receiving process 20

Maritime transportation is always the most oriented fields in Vietnam inparticular and worldwide generally By the time, shipping industry as well as othertransport industries is increasingly developed The modernization takes placeaccording to many trends especially Container shipping is important trend Thisalters aspects of shipping industry In order to bring containerization into full play,

it requires complete investment not only in shipping companies but also in terminals

as well as related sectors The results of this investment show the advantages ofContainerized revolution Benefits of containers do not just stop in convenience oftransferring progress They also bring advantages in managing, delivery andreceiving cargoes procedures It can be said that containerization bringsconvenience to transporters, cargoes owners, terminals, ports… Containerizationalso requires transport companies, container yard, and container port to have largechange about workforce, infrastructure, and facilities as well as continuouslyimprove and complete services quality in order to serve customers with increasinglyhigh quality services In conditions of the current economic integration, theconcentration for developing financial resources, investment in extending berth andcontainer yard, upgrading facilities and infrastructure with the aim of operatingcontainer yard effectively are urgent problems of CY and other transport servicesbusiness enterprises

In the process of integration and national development, Vietnam MaritimeTransport sector has achieved strong development in both scale and quality Alongwith the innovative modernization of material and technical basis at the ports, theresearch, analysis, evaluating the business activities of enterprises are also beingattention VICONSHIP is one of the firm of shipping agents and freight leadingcontainer port system, storage, private fleet services catering to the transportation ofgoods both conventional and containerized cargo in Vietnam As the development

of the country, the annual volume of goods transported by inland waterways swelled

to serve industrial parks, factories, new urban areas Facing the opportunities,advantages and new challenges, waterway transport sector in general and containerJSC Vietnam (VICONSHIP) in particular has been gradually rising

To begin with, the research purposes of topic are to understand activities in

CY of Green Port Besides that, the dissertation also analyses business activitiesthrough some main indicators, evaluate delivery and receiving FCL containers at

CY of Green Port, clarify pros and cons So that researcher can recommend somemethods to improve efficiency of these procedures

Research Object

The dissertation focuses on researching theoretical basis of delivering andreceiving container procedure at CY in Green Port Particularly, the researchclarifies problems of this procedure including strength, weakness, threat andopportunity by using research methods containing aggregating, analyzing,comparison business activities of company (2010- 9 first months of 2015) anddissertation offers recommendations to enhance delivering and receiving containerprocedure at CY

Research Scope

The dissertation covers delivering and receiving container procedure at CY

in Viconship- Green Port

Research Findings

The knowledge about delivering and receiving container procedure at CY of Green Port: features, strength, weakness…

CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW1.1 Overview of container yard (CY)

According to Shipping terminologies, Container terminal is an areadesignated for the stowage of cargoes in container; usually accessible by truck,railroad and marine transportation Here containers are picked up, dropped off,maintained and housed (Definedterm.com) This kind of port includes importantareas as following: Quayside, apron, container yard, container freight station…,facilities such as: cranes, forklift, vehicles…and other equipment: lightingequipment, repairing station, cleaning place for container, power station for reefercontainer…

Container Yard is “Port facility at which containers are accepted for loadingonboard ships, and off-loaded containers are delivered to the consignees Alsocalled Marshalling yard” (Business dictionary, 2015) This is a crucial part of portwith widen open area, strong ground containing many tiers of container The CYcan be divided into different areas: Preparing loading containers onto ship area,containers receiving area from ship, area for empty containers… In transporting ofcontainers, “Container yard” is used as a term indicating the range of transport andcarriers’ responsibility that is from yard to yard (CY- CY)

1.2 Main features of Container yard

Most of containers (well over 90%) loaded or unloaded from ship must bethrough container yard (staff receive containers from carriers or delivery containers

to forwarders) CY is seen as the extension of quaysides, destination or department

of domestic distribution system The effectiveness of CY operation have largeimpact on that of containerization Particularly, container yard has major operations

as follow: loading and unloading containers, storage facilities either in port orinland It is also the places for containers carriers to store containers and chassis,receive or delivery containers, lend out or receive returned empty containers

The operation happens in areas of CY mainly associating with mechanizationand limiting to use labor force Therefore, this is more rationalized compared totrading regulations In addition, fast, effective and rational containers operating will

increase services quality (in any weather conditions) Besides that, CY operationdepartments not only control containers in CY but also carry out other activitiessuch as: import and export containers, load and unload containers, lease containers,marketing… It can be seen as a Joint venue between loading and unloading unitsand transport companies.

Operation on the storage yard is the most complicated part at a terminalbecause both inbound and outbound container flows are handled in this areasimultaneously Yard planning hence play important role in determining the portefficiency to a great extent, in which the assignment of storage locations to inboundcontainers (i.e., storage allocation), the utilization of equipment in yard and theretrieval sequence of outbound containers need to be reasonably resolved

Stack configuration and storage allocation

In traditional yard, containers are stacked by yard cranes side by side and one on top

of another to form shaped heaps called blocks, each of which consists of a number

of rows in width, a number of bays in length and a number of tiers in height Thesize of each block is varied in different port Definitely, the problem is to determine

a good stack configuration, specially the height of stacking It is logical to storecontainers in higher stacking to save essential ground space, however the more tiersthe containers are stacked in, potentially the more reshuffles/rehandles will berequired to retrieve a required container With a stacking configuration, a guideline

is neccessary for allocation of containers in the yard area The distribution ofcontainers is often decided by container types which are classified in accordancewith the origins and destinations of containers as follows:

Local import containers: inbound containers from vessels at predictable times, to be

carried out by external trucks at unpredictable times

Local export containers: inbound containers from external trucks at unpredictable

times, to be loaded to vessels at predictable times

Transshipment containers: discharged from mother vessels and to be loaded to

second carriers, both at predictable times

Cranes and their deployment policies

There are several types of yard cranes in container terminals to store andretrieve containers in and from the stack, among which rubber tyred gantry cranes(RTG) and rail-mounted gantry cranes (RMG) are most commonly used An RTGmoves on rubber tyres over containers and is able to move among blocks An RMGruns on rails normally serving a single storage block between the rails Both RTGand RMG provide higher density storage and shorter cycle time than other cranessuch as straddle carriers that carry containers between their legs, mobile harborcranes that are inherited from pre-containerized era, and heavy-duty forklift that aremore used for empty containers The decision of cranes number is really crucial so

as to make sure effective storage and retrieval process Particularly, for a givenamount of space, more yard cranes result in shorter response time for a retrievalrequest but higher facility investment Hence the terminal need to take into accountcarefully budgets and yard capacity to invest in suitable equipment

1.4 The methods of container arrangement in CY.

Obviously, there are many methods for arranging containers in CY, each ofthem has its own advantages If they are associated effectively, they will promotemaximum their benefits

Arranging containers according to shipping lines.

In fact, CY does not own any empty containers, but it manages so manycontainers of shipping lines Due to regulation not to delivery empty containers orcargoes of carriers to others (avoiding large damage of economy), managingcontainers in accordance with shipping lines is very crucial Each shipping companyhas specific logo, color, signs and codes for its empty containers This can berecognized by eyes Moreover, in order to adapt cargo handling demand, shippingline will rent or buy further containers from Container Company These containershave the same symbols, colors, signs and codes because of belonging to an owner.They can be distinguished by profiles and difficult to differentiate by manualmethod Hence, managing containers following owners means that CY departmentsmust accurately know quantity, codes of containers of each shipping line inanytime Furthermore, every change in managing containers must be updatecontinuously and accurately once containers are loaded to CY.

In the site of delivery and receiving, container yard only delivery and receivecontainers when having decent orders The lawful delivery and receiving orders aredocuments signed and stamped by shipping lines or their agencies Thus, staff mustcheck correction of orders before delivery cargoes to avoid mistakes Intransportation aspect, in order to delivery containers, it requires orders fromtransporters

On the other hand, the main purpose of managing containers according tocargoes owners is for handling containers As full or empty containers of differentowners cannot be arranged in one area together Hence information of cargo owners

or shipping lines in documents is indispensable In the case because of anymistakes, a container of this owner is wrongly sorted in area of another owner orinformation of that is erroneously updated It will take a long time and cause waste

of material, equipment in handling or delivery and receiving progress

On the account of all factors afore, it is reasonable to use software inmanagement containers This will help to reduce amount of managing work in CY.Based on this software, staff can identify accurately position and condition ofcontainers

Controlling containers according to time.

In the time containers are stored in CY, it related to their shifting in operatingprogress All owners of empty containers do not want their containers stored in CYfor a long time This comes from several reasons as following Firstly, if containersare in CY in too long period of time, this leads to increase the number of containersneed to be exploited that increase the investment Secondly, the shipping lines alsohave to bear storage fee From the perspective of CY management, storing time hasimportant role The first thing is that storing time is the base for calculating charges

of storing in CY The second thing is that this related to containers shiftingcontrolling in the inland CY system With this meaning, the internet managementsystem will provide the figure for containers long located in CY From that, staffcan have plan for them In the case, containers locate in CY too long that causes badeffects for calculating, building and planning CY This also causes congestion andoverloading of containers at the same time

Controlling containers according to types, size.

Nowadays, many kinds of containers are widely used in shipping industry.Every shipping company invest in full types of containers due to adapting variety ofshipping demands Each type has its own size, signs and codes Hence preservingregulations of them are also dissimilar

Controlling containers according to their situation.

In this case, managing depends on full or empty containers All ports havefee for containers having cargoes inside or not The shipping containers cancompensate CY storing charge by take money for storing containers from theircustomers Container storing charge is the fine for cargo owners who havecontainers stored in CY over regulated time Each shipping line has dissimilarcharge and regulating time for free Every port also basing on containers shiftingspeed of different shipping companies has unlike time or free storing emptycontainers and fee for storing as well

Controlling containers in and out port.

The detailed information of containers always must be checked and updated

so that they factually correct The purpose of this work is to avoid mistakes indelivery and receiving containers and later complains When having right

information about containers, the operation and management will be more effectiveand convenient.

1.6 The matters related to CY management.

The functions of CY management are planning, organizing and controllingactivities in CY by associating different resources in CY in providing services forcustomers The research on CY management must start from the necessaryorganization structure and decision processes The activities of CY disintegrate,operate during 24 hours and link to complicated and widen nets plus diversity ofoperation and responsible scale in managing CY The procedures for determiningand collecting necessary information need to be modified according to operationmodel of CY Thus, the important thing is that design organizational structure andsystem structure in order to offer effective decisions This ensures efficiency of CYoperation and meet the requirements

Besides that CY activities include different services served customers such

as security, occupational safety, maintaining machines and facilities… Generallyspeaking, CY managing contains functions as following: Making mid- term andlong term plans and determine strategies This also related to target building and beimplemented by the supreme body; Planning and controlling activities includingdaily operation This is carried out by units related to port operation, port traffic andport technique; Financial and business controlling links to counting market, short-term financial management, workforce management

1.7 Regulations of delivering and receiving container.

a Legal base

 Handling and storage of goods regulations in Vietnam ports that are issued

according to QD no 2106/QD-GTVT on August 23rd, 1997 of Minister ofTransportation

 Handling, forwarding and warehousing contracts between Viconship andcarriers

b General principles

They were regulated at QD 2160/QD-GTVT issued on August23rd, 1997 ofMinister of Transportation

Their contents are following:

- Forwarding intact containers, intact seals

- In case the seal is not intact, two parties can discuss and reach agreementabout settlement plan according to: quantity, volume… (in usual they caninvite inspector)

- For refrigerated containers: staff records temperature, the electrical controlpanel, looks at containers ventilating, power cord length, wind splitting plate

- For open- top containers: staff records tarpaulin overlaying top of containers,color of tarpaulin, ligament and seals If open-top containers are empty, staffmust record quantity of roof bars

- For tank container: staff records quantity of parameters testing clocks,condition of clocks, empty tank container condition…

- Before storing in C/Y, containers must be in good condition, safety and clearfigures Every seals are not clear and dim number that must be reported andsubstituted by new seals

CHAPTER II: DILIVERING AND RECEIVING

CONTAINER PROCEDURE AT CONTAINER YARD IN

VICONSHIP-GREEN PORT2.1 Overview of Viconship- Green Port.

Vietnam Container Shipping Joint Stock Company (Viconship) wasestablished in 2002 according to Decision No 183/TTG, 04 March 2002 of PrimeMinister with the aim of changing from state-owned company to joint stockcompany Its precursor was Vietnam container shipping company officially found

on 27 July, 1985 in accordance with Decision No 1310/QD- BGTVT of Minister ofTransportation The company’s fields of activity right after being established are:providing services about ship agency, delivering and receiving container agency foroverseas container firms, loading, unloading, transferring, warehouse operation, CYoperation…Viconship is the first company in Vietnam having services of containertransportation The company has its own container terminal, warehouse, truckinglines for container and conventional cargo moving services in the North, in theCentral and in the South of Vietnam It provides complete facilities for all modes ofcargo service Linking Shippers and Consignees with Owners is what they do best.Thanks to suitable adjusting for the market economy, after ten years of operation,the company becomes mature in all aspects, its producing scale also hassignificantly increased

Green Port terminal established on September, 2004 is a member company

of Vietnam Container Shipping Joint Stock Company (Viconship) The Harborbridge is located at 20°51'50"N, 106°43'19"E, 20 knots away from Buoy 0 (nearbyChua Ve, in Cam River downstream) Being a member of Viconship, one of thestrengths of Greenport is the updating location of containers time to time Thanks tothe investment in management software, the announcement to customers aboutlocation or container monitoring is quick, accurate and increase the port'sreputation

2.1.1 Features of Green Port.

a Map of Green Port

Figure 1: The 3D diagrams of Green Port(Source: http://www.viconship.com)

Figure 2: The 2D diagram of Green Port(Source: http://www.viconship.com)

b Shipping way