{"id":722,"date":"2017-03-21T14:00:29","date_gmt":"2017-03-21T14:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/?p=722"},"modified":"2017-03-27T14:39:16","modified_gmt":"2017-03-27T14:39:16","slug":"mwr-containerization-changed-business-world-significantly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/making-work-real\/2017\/03\/mwr-containerization-changed-business-world-significantly\/","title":{"rendered":"MWR: Containerization Changed the Business World Significantly"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Empty<\/a>
Empty road and containers in harbor at sunset<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It is owing to globalization that as consumers we have billions of choice when it comes to the products we buy, \u2018all products are everywhere in the world\u2019 (Evans, 2012). Globalization is the process of world economies becoming increasingly integrated and interdependent on each other. During my research a common occurring theme was transport\u2019s role in globalization. This then focused my inquiry towards containerization in shipping.<\/p>\n

In 1937 American businessman Malcolm Mclean observed that it would be far simpler and time efficient to unload a trucks entire hold onto a container ship rather than individual boxes from the hold (Evans, 2012). This was the beginning of containerization. It wasn\u2019t until 1956 that the first purpose built container ship carried cargo from port to port (Karan, 2016). This first ship carried 58 containers, today the largest ones can carry in excess of 9000 (Cudahy, 2006). This rapid development of containerization, supported by a network of docks, loading equipment and road transport has linked the world by simplifying intercontinental transport of goods thus driving globalization (Ham et al, 2012). I watched a film: Life in a day showing everyday life around the world. I realized that every single product I saw was there because of transport systems such as container ships. The best example I could find of containerizations impact was the \u2018BBC box\u2019 where the BBC tracked a container for 1 year. The box crossed every continent, cities from LA to Shanghai, carrying car parts to cat food (BBC News, 2009).<\/p>\n

Container ships may have originated in the 1950\u2019s but the concept of transporting items in containers is a longer standing idea. Boxes, much like containers, have been used to transport goods by rail and horse since 18th century England (world shipping council, 2016). It is this early concept that has developed into the idea of shipping cargo by standardized containers.<\/p>\n

Transportation has changed the world of business. Firstly, and most importantly, I believe the availability of cheap large scale transport has massively improved consumer choice leading to greater competition between business and healthier markets (bookboon blog, 2011). Processes such as containerization benefit from economies of scale and the reduction of labour costs from loading and unloading at docks (Ham et al, 2012). This keeps costs for business low whilst expanding their potential reach and today multinational firms are able to export to global markets with ease as well as importing stocks and components. For example Walmart import 30,000 tonnes per day in containers, this illustrates the kind of scale to which business uses containers (Parker, 2013). A recent problem is in fact that shipping prices are too low and companies such as Hanjin have entered administration (Ambrose, 2016). For instance the average cost of sea freight has fallen since 1930 by 65% (Edeos, 2011).<\/p>\n

The uses of containers have evolved throughout the second half of the 20th century from early on designs. This has changed the business world significantly for every business. Without radical changes in transport globalization would be difficult to<\/p>\n

imagine. Along with Air travel containerization has been one of the most prominent parts of this radical change.<\/p>\n

James Brooker studies BSc Business Management (with placement) at Southampton Business School. The views in this article are those of the author. This article is part of the ‘Making Our Work Real’ series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is owing to globalization that as consumers we have billions of choice when it comes to the products we buy, \u2018all products are everywhere in the world\u2019 (Evans, 2012). Globalization is the process of world economies becoming increasingly integrated and interdependent on each other. During my research a common occurring theme was transport\u2019s role in globalization. This then focused …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99255,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1030568],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-making-work-real","column","threecol"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99255"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=722"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":810,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722\/revisions\/810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}