Shipping Industry

The present book is one of the excellent volumes making the popular Control Engineering Series. Nowadays, the freight transportation is really vital to the safe and effective functioning of the human societies and it shall be noted that the transportation chain has already considerably expanded.

One of the greatest challenges of the modern cargo transportation industry are increasing capacity at sea ports and movements in the supply chain while attempting to be compliant with the applicable economical, environmental, political and other important requirements. It is becoming quite obvious that the solutions that were traditionally applied in the past, cannot be considered feasible any longer. However, it should also be taken into attention that the latest advances in IT, data management, telecommunications as well as computation tools, could definitely provide the participants of the industry with some new and promising approaches.

The publication by Petros Ioannou was released with the declared intention of the author to touch the most important aspects of the majority of issues that usually affect throughput for the large container ports. The book is remarkably well-organized and very reader-friendly; it consists of seventeen chapters addressing the key aspects of intelligent freight transportation, such as port choice and competition, automation of terminals, various environmental issues etc.

This book provides readers with a necessary guidance on the whole survey process - they will know what shall be done to prepare, and what exactly would constitute good practice; all info presented in the publication is completely detailed, making the process able to be executed as quickly and efficiently as possible.

In addition to the process of conducting the survey, some supplementary topics have been described in this book - such topics include the ships likely encountered, the rigging and gear, as well as the required special techniques. The author performed an excellent and thorough research, providing numerous practical examples and photo reference materials; you will understand not only what happens during the marine surveys but also how the ship officers and marine surveyors are expected to perform those surveys.

This book ensures that the readers clearly understand each step of the surveying process. In fact, it is the first work to describe the on/off-hire and bunker surveys so comprehensively and, at the same time, in a very clear and easy to understand way. The publication includes numerous images and illustrations to clarify the key concepts outlines by the author. We would highly recommend this book to anyone who is conducting marine surveys or planning to get involved in such activities in the future. Apart from theory, the book is full of valuable practical examples.

Subject document was initially prepared and subsequently released to explain all interested readers the way how exactly the global unionism in the shipping industry did appear. Nathan Lillie - the author - argues that the industrial nature of shipping and, particularly, the inter-connected structure of the associated production chains did facilitate the total globalization of union bargaining, together with the trans-nationalization of the union structures.

And this has resulted in the global institutions of the collective bargaining as well as effective and active participation in regulatory politics. The present study uses a very broad variety of the reliable and well-respected sources plus effective analytical techniques, basing mainly on the numerous interviews made with several union officials plus other maritime industry people from the different countries.

The author of the title has combined the analytical traditions in international relations and industrial relations intending to demonstrate and explain how exactly the actors of industrial relations participate in global political arenas. Though the relationships existing there between the industrial relations and international areas might actually be a bit sharper and more obvious in shipping than elsewhere, subject interactions do have wide and, what shall be noted, constantly increasing importance in all other relevant sectors.