Hapag-Lloyd to provide full transparency on vessel arrivals
With this initiative on schedule reliability, Hapag-Lloyd is tackling one of the main challenges faced by the global shipping industry, according to the company's release.
Container shipping is currently going through its worst operational crisis in many years. Due to high demand, massive COVID-19-related restrictions and the Suez Canal incident in April 2021, the industry has been forced to deal with major operational challenges, such as congested ports, ship delays and infrastructural bottlenecks. Nonetheless, Hapag-Lloyd would like to underline its commitment to address this critical aspect of the service it provides to its customers. Hapag-Lloyd’s clear objective is to enhance transparency on the schedule performance of its vessels. By also increasing the ships’ on-time performance, the carrier aims to improve supply-chain reliability for its customers and to maintain its current ranking among the top third of the 15 largest carriers in terms of schedule reliability.
Hapag-Lloyd is making significant changes to many operational processes – including improving cooperation with terminals, ports and all on-shore partners – to reduce delays. The clear target is to have ships arrive on or within one day of the ETA (estimated time of arrival) as indicated in the booking confirmation. Relying on punctuality can bring benefits to customers, such as reducing their warehouse stocks and avoiding excess inventory and interim storage. The carrier modifies its schedule and voyage management to provide more accurate vessel ETAs and pick-up times when containers will be released. Delays will still occur, but with better operational processes and arrival forecasting, customers can get updates faster, more reliably and proactively to improve planning.
Hapag-Lloyd will be fully transparent about its schedule reliability via its Customer Dashboard. Here, its performance as well as its standing compared to the global industry are measurable. Apart from providing detailed information based on the monthly Sea-Intelligence Global Liner Performance Report, the company offers data collected in the “Carrier Schedule Analysis” (CSA), developed in-house. As part of the launch, Hapag-Lloyd presents global data versus the market as well as additional breakdowns at the country, trade and port-pair levels. And the carrier will continuously work to expand the amount of information it provides, eventually down to the individual-container level.
With this initiative, Hapag-Lloyd reaffirms its ambition to differentiate itself from its competitors in terms of quality and sets the course to be an active driver of change in the industry. With the implementation of its Strategy 2023, Hapag-Lloyd is significantly improving its service to its customers and continuing on its journey with the overall goal of becoming “Number One for Quality”.