A Case Study on Bi-lateral Resource Integration Oriented Marine Logistics Service System

Marine logistics service is one of the fundamental production services supporting the import and export businesses of other industries. The current marine logistics service eco-system formed spontaneously, and during its development, various types of service providers were stepwise imported and complex business collaborations formed between them. Based on our investigation on marine logistics services between South Korea and Weihai, China, we found that some deficiencies existed in such a decentralized service eco-system and led to non-optimized quality of marine logistics service. To solve these issues, we designed a bi-lateral resource integration oriented solution, in which a third-party service agency is established to help cargo owners and various logistics providers set up mutual service relationships, integrate bi-lateral resources, and monitor and evaluate quality/credit of services, thereby improving QoS and customer satisfaction. Business operation mechanisms, especially profit patterns, are briefly discussed. Benefits and disadvantages of BIRIS-based solutions are analyzed. Business and technological lessons learned from the solution are briefly put forward. Finally some possible directions for future innovations and improvements are discussed.