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Executives and operators are treating key performance indicators much as physicists did with the invention of lasers 40 years ago. They are seen as powerful new tools with enormous potential, but no one is quite sure what to do with them – "a solution without a problem".

Ports around the world are very nervous about divulging what indicators they use, many claiming that competitors will be able to get vital intelligence on how well they are doing. And some are certain that if terminals are privately operated they don't need such measurements or are ignorant of what they are; when asked if they use KPIs at all, a spokesman for a Western Seaboard port in North America responded, "not that I've been able to find".

For Port MetroVancouver in Canada, the opposite is the case. Dale Thulin, manager of monitoring and measurement, says the use of indicators is "crucial" and is eager to promote their use and acceptance by terminal operators and railways. As with most ports, Vancouver has been paying serious attention for the past year, replacing a supply chain dashboard set up five years ago.

The important measurements at the container terminals are dwell time and total transit time consistency – from discharge in Vancouver to deramping in Toronto. But the port is being careful not to look for magical answers. "We are not trying to boil the ocean," says Mr Thulin.

At the bulk terminals, measurements to devise for a supply chain grain scorecard are still in their early stages.

Just how successful has the effort been? "At the dock we zero in on boxes that have been there more than three days. From January 2010 to January this year, dwell times from ship to rail car have dropped from 3.75 days to 2.6 days. So, this has been a significant success," says Mr Thulin.

"Equally importantly, the terminal operators and railways realise how important KPIs are. It is essential to get their cooperation."

Taking a five-year view, he says the ideal situation would be daily analysis of indicators as opposed to the existing monthly process. "The expense has not been all that great of setting up the indicators, as it's largely a matter of getting the right software." Mr Thulin says that most of the work lies in choosing the right indicators, making sure that everyone understands their importance and getting everyone to support the effort.

APM Terminals worldwide has leapt into KPIs, applying them to all aspects of its business, including performance, environment and safety. Safety indicators are reported through the global incident reporting tool called Synergi, which is used mainly in the oil sector.

Head of Corporate Responsibilities Henrik Kristensen says measurements follow the Global Reporting Initiative and are audited by Norway's Det Norske Veritas classification society. "We are using some KPI’s to drive performance, and another set of monthly data sets, to measure how we stack up. We are starting to apply severity risk matrix to our incidents – which will enable a more proactive approach to improve mitigation of risks. We are a performance driven organisation and are using metrics to drive business objectives forward. "

Reflecting the accelerating momentum in the industry for a common system of measurement, APM Terminals wants to join with other organisations to establish global environmental standards for greenhouse gas calculation and reporting as part of the KPI standards. "There are many outside the industry who have ideas about this," says Mr Kristensen, "but no one knows the container terminals as well as the operators themselves. We aim to get this done with other operators in 2011."

At the same time, fresh thinking is needed, he says, particularly in safety. "KPIs like Personal Safety Plans have been established at each terminal against total number of employees, and indicators of safety training conducted against total number of employees, that sort of thing."

Mr Kristensen says the group is learning from other industries. "We invited 15 safety and business leaders to visit an oil rig, Maersk Reacher, to take a step upwards and learn from the next level of safety maturity. We completed a three-day global sustainability meeting, where we invited external speakers from Academia, from Shell and others to get inspiration about the next level.

"We have matured well during the last five years – but still aim to climb the ladder and achieve even better results."

Consulting and auditing group Accenture says ports run the risk of being too narrowly focused on one or two areas. "It might be financial issues, such as cost to handle per teu, amount of overtime to finish a vessel or the cost of extending gate operations, for example," says the group's Mark McCalla. "The second area is around operations, in areas such as moves per hour by specific crane or gang, number of in-gate or out-gates by shift. While these are important measures they shouldn't be the sole focus.

"Information that can be more challenging to capture relates to customers in areas like customer profitability, types of cargo or vessel strings, as well as digging into the data to determine origin and destination market share. 

"This can be particularly important in China, a market significant for its current and future growth," says Mr McCalla. "As manufacturing moves further inland, terminal operators are studying where their next generation of investments should be placed as the 'ship follows the cargo'. This is primarily because of the difficulties associated with tying operational information from the terminal operating system to the functions of billing and labor management.

"This information may be sat within an enterprise system or across several 'fit for purpose' systems. Having an integrated back office system across the enterprise can help, but it still requires that last mile integration of data from TOS systems to make it useful for senior management."

As Vancouver has found, Accenture says that expense is not a big problem. "The issue is often difficulty of pulling the right data sources together to have valid KPIs. We have worked with China-based terminal operators to utilise our Terminal Performance asset. Their feedback has been that it's a valuable investment in terms of time and expense to get this more comprehensive and holistic dashboard." While the industry is mostly absorbed in trying to work out the where and what of setting up indicators, there is an undoubted need for an international standard. InterManager (the ship managers' association) is pushing this hard and has established 66 KPIs.

Encouragement for a world system has come from the IMO and EU (although they are careful to avoid endorsing the InterManager project specifically) and it is clear that the next new thrust will be to get agreement on all five continents.