Turnaround Approach Of Freight Railway And Port Operations

Croc Mondelief International (CMI) in partnerships with Trendline (TL) Malaysia

A. Background to Proposal

CMI and TL approach their turning around of rail freight logistics and port operations by firstly understanding the roles of freight railways and port operations within the broader context of a country’s fright logistics strategy. This is our departure point.

Freight logistics and Port Operations are Integrally and fundamentally linked to a country’s domestic and international competitiveness through:

• Reducing the costs of doing business
• Facilitating economic growth, job creation and enabling local industries that can compete with their peers across the world,
• Reducing the costs of imported and exported goods
• Attractiveness in securing foreign investments
• Attractiveness in making country’s international/regional trade hubs

B. Turnaround Approach of Freight Railway and Port Operations

CMI and TL will then undertake the following audit of the Freight railway and Port Operations.

From the above, it is clear that a country’s freight railway and ports cannot operation in isolation the country’s logistics strategy of providing international competitiveness for it. Therefore the start of turning around any freight railway and port operations has to begin with:

Step 1: An examination of a country’s strategies, policies and laws to ensure that any positioning of railway freight logistics and port operations is aligned with the strategies, laws and policies of a country, an example here is that if the railway operator has the best freight strategy to migrate cargo from road to rail, but the country’s laws are an obstacle to this strategy then this strategy is doomed to fail. Another example here is that if the country’s strategy is to migrate most of its cargo from road to rail but the port operations favours road, then the rail strategy will fail and road will be the main mover of cargo in a country. Any gaps identified here by CMI and TW have to be addressed at a national government level,

Step 2: Only after examining the country freight logistics and port operations strategy does CMI and TW then move to the next level and that is to examine the efficacy of the institutional arrangements in a country, ie, the institutional structures that are in place to oversee freight railways and ports and whether these structures are enabling the country strategy or not, and if not, why not and what are the gaps that need to be attended to,

Step 3: The next step is to then audit the freight railways and port operations to understand their: o Freight logistics strategy

• Does their freight logistics strategy support government’s freight logistics strategy for example of moving cargo from road to rail, it not, why not, where are the gaps and why, how should these gaps be closed,
• Do they have the correct structure in place to drive this strategy,
• Do they have the correct skills, competencies, talent and culture to drive this strategy, Do they have the correct processes and technology to drive this strategy,
• Do they have the correct partnerships (with customers, shipping companies, freight forwarders, locomotive and wagon technology companies, etc) in place to drive this strategy,
• Do they have the correct functional strategies of human resources, risk, safety, commercial, infrastructure, sales, planning, resourcing (assets & maintenance), operations to drive this strategy, How efficient and integrated are their operations to world benchmarks.