Port industry and container terminal business have been continuously developed in line with the world economic growth and the globalization of the world. But the competition structure of port industry has been changed by recent several global finance risks and the excessive competition among ports or container terminals in port has been appeared continuously.
Since the opening of the Busan New Port, the imbalance between supply and demand has caused an insecure market situation in Busan port. Under the poor market conditions, terminal rates have been sharply decreased and terminal operators are suffering very serious financial difficulties. To overcome this situation terminal operators should take some actions to improve their competitiveness.
The purpose of this study is to propose the effective methods to strengthen the competitive power to container terminal operators in Busan port through improving the current manpower utilization for field employees.
To achieve this, I analyzed and diagnosed the problems on manpower utilization for field employees based on actual practice of container terminal operators in Busan port, and also I investigated and researched the best practice for manpower utilization of overseas container terminal operators in this study.
Especially, in order to analyze the problems on manpower utilization for field employees precisely, this study focused on 6 specific factors. Those were the deployment system of field employees called shift pattern, one of port industry's feature that is manning ratio, overtime work for maximization to use internal resources, reducing weight of excessive fixed labor cost that is characteristic of labor intensive industry, using outsourcing or casual workers for securing employment flexibility and promotion of multifunctional field employees, and it analyzed with collecting actual practice in Busan port and explained the effectiveness through actual case of H terminal.
This study shows the problems on manpower utilization for field employees of terminal operators in Busan port, and also improvement plans to solve them.
As a results of this study, 6 improvement plans can be summarized as follow :
First, terminal operators should change their shift pattern for field employees from fixed deployment system to flexible roster system considering the major characteristics represented by the passiveness of port industry compared with general manufacturing industries.
Second, terminal operators need to adjust the manning ratio which is provided to field employees to prevent safety accidents caused by works in high altitude condition after analysis of their actual workload under current working environment.
Third, to make the maximum use of their internal resources terminal operators should utilize overtime works for field employees at full level within a permitted limit under current law. Through this way, they could save a massive labor cost and manage cost structure.
Forth, terminal operators need to outsource non-core functions of terminal operation to save the cost and increase labor productivity, and to maximize the effectiveness, terminal operators should deploy them to work under the thorough principle of "Need Basis", also they need to implement the manpower pooling system consisted of outsourcing workers or daily workers from BPTWU to save the cost during idle time and to increase the manning productivities between close-by container terminals.
Fifth, terminal operators should provide the customized development programs to their employees for bringing up the multifunctional manpower. This should help to adjust the workload among field employees by job type.
Sixth, as per implementation of above improvement plans, field employees' actual workloads will be increased, thus terminal operators need to manage their working inspiration and motivation for the stable terminal operation. For this reason, they should prepare the special compensation scheme in line with their contribution and performance, and they should open the communication channels with field employees to solve their complaints and difficulties. The mutual understanding is the most important factor for the company's survival and development in future.