Efficiency measurement in global port operations: Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process and Fuzzy Data Envelopment Analysis

Ports have become the most suitable areas to provide logistics services, thanks to their importance in the international transport chain. After the container started to be used as a transport container, there has been a serious development in transportation. Container terminals have an important place in the supply chain and logistics systems due to the advantages such as the ability to transport the container to the destination with a single operation without opening it, to carry different loads in a single container, to save time, to be reliable and cheap. All these developments have led to the conclusion that container terminals need to measure port efficiency in order to survive. In this study; Studies on the preference of a global port operator in Turkey and the ports in Europe over each other and the comparison of the relative efficiency scores of these ports are presented. There is no single efficiency indicator for measuring port efficiency. Because the structure of each port in the world is different. For this purpose, after examining the existing literature, which criteria will be determined in the productivity measurement of port operators, it has been put into expert opinion and the criteria have been determined. In this study, the process of measuring the efficiency of ports was examined in two stages. In the first stage, the parameters affecting the port efficiency were examined with the Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (BAHP). The AHP method, which is one of the multi-criteria decision-making methods, was preferred to determine the degree of importance of the determined criteria and to systematically compare and evaluate the criteria. FAHP was used as a method to better express the verbal uncertainty in pairwise comparison judgments and to facilitate decision making with values in certain ranges without using exact values (Şişman et al., 2016). In the second stage, the outputs obtained in the first stage were taken as inputs and the Fuzzy Data Envelopment Analysis (FDA) model was used to measure the port efficiency. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is a method used to measure the relative efficiency of enterprises or ports with decision-making units and multiple inputs and outputs. However, since it is not possible to measure the data as an exact value in real-world problems, more accurate efficiency scores were obtained for uncertain situations with the ICA method. (Sengupta, 1992) Thus, the extent to which the port operators use the data values of the criteria effectively has been examined with the BVZA. Four inputs and one output were determined to be used in the BIDA. The lower and upper limit values for the results of the port activities, for the input and the output, were determined with the help of the CCR model. It is expected that this study will contribute to the BVZA model, and in practice, it will contribute to the determination of the port with the best competence in using the existing physical conditions of the determined ports, to compare their relative efficiency scores among themselves, to act with concrete data in making financial decisions, to reach high profitability rates and to stand out in the competition.