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Article Excerpt
Abstract
We examine how the principles of quality management (QM) can be employed to ensure maritime security for liner shipping companies (LSCs), and emphasize the interface relationships between the regulatory framework and the QM system, which appear to be overlooked in both theory and practice. This article suggests a conceptual framework for managing quality in the context of the new maritime security regime. We illustrate the application of this framework with an LSC using a ten-step approach to ensure regulatory compliance and quality conformance with the 24-Hour Advance Vessel Manifest Rule so that the legal requirements, as well as the operational and service goals, can be fully met. The article also provides procedural mechanisms and guidelines for LSCs and other maritime interests contemplating the implementation of maritime security with quality in view of similar undertakings.
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The shipping and maritime industry, in its wider definition, has come from a compliance culture where fragmented thinking has been the norm rather than the exception. This is particularly the case in the field of maritime security where, despite repeated warnings of the danger and consequences stemming from actual and potential security incidents (cargo theft, stowaways, drug smuggling, illegal human trafficking, piracy, and, lately, terrorism), neither the perception of security risk nor the response to it had nurtured a proper "security culture" until new security regulations came into force.
The events and aftermath of September 11, 2001 have not only fostered further dimensions to global maritime security but also triggered a fundamental shift in the way policy and regulatory instruments are drafted, managed, and implemented. For many years, the international maritime community has responded solely to the crude influence of internal commercial pressures, whereas security was considered only during times of huge claims and insurance premiums, as a result of wars and political conflicts. Now, however, the growing pressure from external regulatory sources has made it necessary for maritime industry players to fully integrate the security element into both their strategic plans and operational procedures. Even in view of commercial and market forces, there already exists evidence of a positive correlation between best-compliance practices and long-term commercial rewards. Besides the benefits of international certification and "fast-lane" treatment, early and effective compliance also secures strategic marketplace advantages and promotes long-term trust and collaborative supply chain relationships.
Nevertheless, while the new security provisions are becoming widely accepted and implemented, a demonstration of the corresponding quality assurance systems appears to be less evident in the conventional background of the academic literature, and even less in the current arrangements of professional and industry practices. Although a relationship among regulatory frameworks, best-practice standards, and quality management systems has long been observed to exist within and across many areas of the maritime industry, including such aspects as regulatory (Drewry Shipping Consultants 1998; Ma 2002), operational (Lopez and Poole 1998: Sletner 2000), environmental (Wooldridge et al. 1998), and safety (Chauvel 1997), the existence of such a relationship is yet to be examined and verified in the field of maritime and port security.
A brief review of the scholarly work on maritime security identifies several gaps in both content and methodology. For the former, the aspects of process implementation and improvement for QM have received scant research attention, even though this perspective is sorely needed in managing and assuring security across the global maritime network. For the latter, empirical investigations in the field are sparse and their undertaking for the purposes of exploratory research and theory building is even more so. To date, much of the available literature on the subject has sought to examine the new security regulations and their operational (Bichou 2006), macro-economic (OECD 2003), and policy implications (Kumar and Vellenga 2004). The remainder is either largely descriptive (King 2005) or predominantly conceptual (Harrald et al. 2004), with only a few studies explicitly investigating maritime security issues at the spatial (Prokop 2004; Thibault et al. 2006), sectoral (Tzannatos 2003), or regulatory-program (Babione et al. 2003) level. Two separate but distinctive areas of literature are worth mentioning in this regard. The first is an established body of literature in which much of the attention has been focused on the interface between quality management and supply chain management (Beamon and Ware 1998; Lai et al. 2005) since the two management approaches share a common theoretical background and are similar in their strategic orientations. The second is a new stream of literature linking maritime security to supply chain vulnerability, with a strong emphasis on sea-container shipping systems (Van De Voort 2003; Russell and Saldana 2003) and on the appraisal of new security regulations in the context of supply chain management (Harrington 2002; Bichou 2004).
In a similar vein, the interface relationships between the maritime security regime and quality management systems also appear to have been overlooked by the industry. This is mainly because much of the attention was paid to deadlines and prescriptive mechanisms for compliance. A review of past practices and procedures in the maritime sector suggests that quality systems have not emerged from a firm-centric or product-based mindset, but were mainly imposed through regulation, e.g., the ISM code for safety and the STCW for training and work organization. As for maritime security, no formal quality benchmark or industry standard had been developed prior to the introduction of the new security regulations. An illustration of the influences of quality thinking on security assurance in shipping and ports would benefit both academia and the profession, particularly at a time when a raft of quality standards for managing maritime and supply chain security are being developed and finalized.
This article presents a generic QM framework for LSCs to implement the 24-Hour Advance Vessel Manifest Rule, hereafter abbreviated as the 24-hour rule. We illustrate the application of the framework with an LSC to demonstrate that the current regulatory requirements for maritime security can be perceived, managed, and implemented in line with the QM approach. The conceptualization of the QM-based maritime security implementation framework translates various security regulations into a series of interrelated quality standards, the achievement of which would benefit intra- and inter-organizational relationships within and among various members of the global maritime community, including ocean carriers, port operators, freight forwarders, shippers, governments, and international agencies. The article examines all such relationships and describes how QM principles can be used to manage and assure compliance with security regulations.
The remainder of the article is structured as follows: The following section briefly reviews the prevalent maritime security programs and initiatives with a special emphasis on the 24-hour rule. The next section examines the historical relationships between quality assurance and regulatory management in shipping and ports, followed by the development of a conceptual framework that identifies and justifies the need for a QM approach to manage security through legislation. Following is an illustration of an application of the QM-based maritime security implementation framework in an LSC in the context of the 24-hour rule. The article concludes with summaries and suggestions for future research.
MARITIME SECURITY: FRAMEWORK AND BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Since the September 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, the international community has acknowledged new security threats to maritime trading and transportation systems and the need for an improved regulatory regime. As a result, several frameworks aimed at enhancing maritime and port security have been introduced, with a special emphasis on protecting the vulnerability of containerized sea-trade operations.
Introduction to the Global Framework of Maritime Security
Regulatory measures that have been multilaterally endorsed and implemented include the International Ship and Port Facility Security (ISPS) code, the IMO/ILO code of practice on security in ports, and, more recently, the Framework of Standards to Secure and Facilitate Global Trade, commonly referred to as the WCO Framework. Among these, the ISPS code is by far the most global in both scope and compliance....
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