Untitled - Ministerstwo Rozwoju Regionalnego

operation it results from, whereas a good can be described independently from
the upstream process that generates it. Once this issue accepted, one can call
“quality of a service” the degree of adequacy of the actually provided service
with the scheduled (theoretical) program it is supposed to fulfill.
In this respect, the usual measure units of freight transport are poor
(whether one uses tons or ton-kilometers does not make much difference), as
they do not include transport key characteristics such as speed, safety, punctuality,
flexibility, etc. The appraisal of this quality belongs both to the carrier and to
the shipper, involved in the bilateral relationship of transport production and
consumption.
The measurement of quality can rely on the assessment of the process, according
to its technical content: one can check the proper condition of vehicles,
measure the lead-time, the frequency of transport, the punctuality of picking
up, etc. Or it can rely on the assessment of the result, considering integrity of
consignments, reliability concerning delivery address or punctuality of delivery,
completeness of consignment (no missing parcel in a range of expected deliveries,
e. g. when several spare parts are necessary to repair a machine), accuracy
of documents (bill of lading, invoice, etc.) and finally flexibility (both for short
range response to unexpected events and for long range innovation).
Quality is of course specific to each transport operation, its definition has to
be determined according to criterions and their weightings have to be set by the
shipper and depending on his products. Some of these criterions are measurable
and others more subjective. They correspond to an expected level of performance,
and the comparison of actual adequacy with theoretical “quality” sets the
rate of success or of failure, at least when the operation is recurrent and enables
a statistics measurement.
Total quality does not exist (or it would have an infinite cost), a tolerable rate
of failure is set, implicit or explicit, according to an economic appraisal. Optimum
quality is not maximum quality, a trade-off is set between logistics requirements
and utility one the one hand, corresponding costs on the other hand, according
to different levels of quality (see Fig. 51).
transport cost sales optimum trade -off
Fig. 51. Optimum level of quality
Source: own study.
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