Created by Ashutosh Sharma, last modified by Henrik Damsgaard Christoffersen on Jul 24, 2019

Introduction

The PLP corridors are a set of corridors, calculated automatically based on past empty flows. By sourcing the corridor information it is possible to get a reasonable list of inland flow options, including capacity, transit time and cost, which is fairly up-to-date. The output of the PLP corridors is a list of relevant site-to-site corridors (S2S) and pool-to-pool corridors (P2P). The P2P corridors are used by PLP to optimise the inland flows, while the S2S are used to explain and analyse the pool to pool corridors.

This page describes which source systems are used to retrieve the corridors and the basic calculations used to set the corridor measures.

Contents


Source Systems

Source SystemDescriptionUsed to determine
Equipment Time Slice (ETS)

The equipment time slice in EDM provides all actual moves of equipment(s) for shipment (with POR and POD info) from gate-out empty from depot thru gate-in full at first load port and all vessel port calls (including transshipments) to last discharge port, gate-out full, to gate-in empty at depot. 

  • Relevant past inland corridors
  • Average transit time per corridor
  • Average volumes per corridor (i.e. assumed capacity)
FACT-Based Reporting (FBR)FBR uses a logic to combine relevant Profit and Loss (PnL) financial records and distribute the cost across equipment moves. This enables cost-based analyses of equipment operations, including using the inland corridors
  • Transport cost per inland corridor

Data Transformations

This section describes the different data sets used to set the S2S and P2P list of corridors. Both lists are set based on the refined corridors with associated capacity, transit time and cost data. 

Refined Corridors

The refined corridors to be used by PLP are identified based on data from equipment time slice (ETS). This raw data includes an aggregated view of flow per month, including volumes and transit times. The refined corridors (S2S and P2P) are identified based on the following basic filters.

FilterDescription
Sanity checks
  • Remove entries where origin and destination site are the same
  • Remove inter-pool entries (PLP corridors are pool level)
Modality
  • Remove entries where transport mode is not Truck/Rail/Barge
  • Remove entries with flows between terminals
Period
  • Remove entries where flows are older than november 2018 (missing HSU bookings in source data)
  • Remove entries where flows greater than one year old
Flows
  • Remove entries if total pool to pool flow is less than 5 TEU
  • Remove entries if total site to site flow is less than 10 TEU or less than 10% of the pool to pool flow


Corridor Capacity

From the refined corridors data the capacity measures are identified for each S2S and P2P corridor using the following formulas:

Formulas

AvgWeeklyTEUCapacity = TotalVolumeTEU / TotalMonthsInData / 30 * 7
MaxWeeklyTEUCapacity = TotalVolumeTEU / 30 * 7
SlackTEUCapacity = MaxWeeklyTEUCapacity / AvgWeeklyTEUCapacity

Transit Time

From the refined corridors data the transit time measures are identified for each S2S and P2P corridor using the following formulas:

FormulasAverageTransitTime = TotalTransitTime / TotalUnits

Transport Cost

From the raw data from FACT-Based Reporting (FBR) the following filters are applied to identify transit times:

FilterDescription
Sanity checks
  • Remove entries where origin and destination site are the same
Period
  • Remove flows greater than one year old
Flows
  • Remove entries where units transported are less than 20


The TransitCost measure is captured for three size types (20/40/45) using the following formula:

Formulas

TotalCost = BargeUSD + TruckingUSD + NormalRailUSD] + InlandPosFuelSurchargeUSD + BlockTrainUSD + OtherUSD + PositioningRebatesUSD
TotalUnits = BargeUnits + TruckingUnits + NormalRailUSD + BlockTrainUnits
AverageTransitCost = TotalCost/TotalUnits

For the corridors where transit cost is not specified, a fallback value of 100 USD is used.