Being the customers’ first choice through unmatched reliability means for Maersk Line to not only deliver a differentiating performance on its own strings, but to ensure that Vessel Sharing Agreements (VSA) with partners measure up to the same standards.
Going forward, all such agreements are to be reviewed and common reliability targets agreed upon in order to make partners commit to delivering the desired reliability level – all to preserve Maersk Line’s customer commitments.
Reliability performance drops The Drewry Schedule Reliability Insight report for first quarter 2010 showed that Maersk Line’s overall reliability performance suffered an 11% drop mainly due to VSA partnerships. The analysis of on-time delivery issues related to VSA is now being handled by a special project team which has been investigating how to improve the reliability performance on shared vessels.
Elena Aleyevskaya, VSA Co-operations Director at the Global Operations Centre of Expertise in London, and project team leader, explains more. “17 VSA services were analysed in total in order to understand the issues,” she says. “While individual recommendations were made for each service, on a general level we will review each VSA and look to establish contractual performance commitments from partner carriers.”
Performance guidelines Maersk Line’s schedule reliability target for VSA for 2010 is 85% globally – this is one of the steps to achieve our overall goal of having 95% on-time delivery to our customers.
Commitment from one of our larger partners has already been forthcoming and is the first time that Maersk Line has included reliability targets in a VSA.
“Our analysis shows that lack of governance around performance tracking with partners has impacted VSA reliability; these new guidelines and supporting performance clauses in the agreements will safeguard reliability and on-time delivery from the start of VSA contracts,” Aleyevskaya states.
“It is crucial for us that our partners not only show good intentions, but are actually ready to commit,” she adds.
