Productivity and a West Coast Port

How can the Port of Tacoma improve its level of operational productivity in view of the escalating volume of container traffic?

The proposed strategy for improving productivity at the Port of Tacoma is the implementation of a sophisticated advanced terminal operations and management system. Based on the proposed strategy, the specific research question that was investigated was as follows:

What is the level of agreement among stakeholders of the Port of Tacoma that the implementation of the proposed advanced port management system will lead to operational productivity improvements that will assure that the Port remains viable in environment of rapidly increasing container traffic?

A survey questionnaire was administered to a sample of 75 stakeholders to obtain the data required to investigate the research questions. Members of the research sample was asked to evaluate the proposed solution for (a) comprehensiveness, (b) scalability, (c) capacity to provide a competitive advantage for five years, and (d) capacity to provide a competitive advantage for 10 years.

The data analysis found that a strong perception existed among stakeholders of the Port of Tacoma that the implementation of an advanced port management system would lead to productivity

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r and management of the resource base. These five decision types are as follows (Chen and Yang, 2003): Source selection decisions Contracting decisions Source performance and reward decisions Source development decisions Source management decisions. Supply-chain management involves assessing resources and activities in an organisation's supply-chain and deciding where and how to achieve a specific competitive advantage. Supply-chain management begins with a determination of what the organisation needs and when those needs have to be met. Thus, the manager must collect data and information about existing sources and resources, new sources and resources, economic factors, and internal decisions within the organisation indicating what outcomes management actually expects from the resources in the operation of the organisation (Carter and Ellram, 2003). Effective supply-chain management for an organisation may also include the implementation of the following practices and procedures (Smith, 2003): Single-sourcing policies for resource groups where single-sourcing is more efficient and effective than working with multiple sources Long-term contracting agreements where long-term contracting is more efficient and effective
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 9188
Approximate Pages = 37 (250 words per page)

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