Status quo and innovative approaches for maritime logistics in the age of digitalization: a guest editors’ introduction

摘要

Maritime logistics can be regarded as the marriage between maritime transportation, handling and moving cargo between and within seaports, and principles of logistics and supply chain management. The unification of those different concepts aims at addressing evolving demands of customers, improving financial and operational performance, service quality, and environmental performance, growth, and corporate responsibility [6]. In recent years, this emerging discipline has attracted increasing attention in academia and practice. Especially the role of ports has drastically changed from its traditional function, connecting sea and landside by facilitating loading and unloading operations, to an essential part of global logistics networks that manages the flow of cargo and offers value-added logistics services in an efficient, effective, safe, and environmental-friendly manner. In this regard, one of the main challenges is to facilitate the coordination and collaboration among various involved actors, especially to manage activities at the interfaces in different phases of transportation, storage, and other logistics activities. Information systems and dedicated decision support systems manage related information flows and support organizational and inter-organizational decision making. Therefore, they are essential for facilitating integration and achieving the goals of maritime logistics strategies. In general, information systems already pervade nearly all activities in maritime logistics primarily used to acquire, process, exchange, and analyze data at a rapidly increasing volume and pace by applying advanced technologies and methods.