ORIGINAL ARTICLE Transportation time reliability appraisal in maritime context Rajesh S. Prabhu Gaonkar 1 • V. Mariappan 2 Received: 1 July 2019 / Revised: 22 April 2020 Ó The Society for Reliability Engineering, Quality and Operations Management (SREQOM), India and The Division of Operation and Maintenance, Lulea University of Technology, Sweden 2020 Abstract Transportation time information plays an important role in transportation and logistics. Variability in transportation time is obvious in any mode of transport due to unpredictable system parameters and their dynamic behavior. Significant work has been done in transportation on road and rail modes but the area is still open and hot for maritime being less explored so far. This paper, in mar- itime perspective, defines the transportation time as time taken for all the activities from loading at source harbor till it’s unloading at the destination and so the return path. As uncertainties can be handled effectively by statistical methods, it is used for transportation time appraisal. The paper presents the methodology for maritime transportation reliability assessment and illustrates the same with an application to a case of Stena Baltica ferry operation in Europe. This paper uniquely combines quality and relia- bility tools in maritime studies and the obtained results are validated through the simulation. Further a leading link is taken to resolve the problem reducing the uncertainty level in the voyage by bringing process capability study into the investigation. Appropriate investigation and analyses with respect to transportation time variance reduction is also carried out in the paper. Keywords Transportation time  Transportation reliability index  Maritime system  Reliability simulation Abbreviations LAL Lower allowance limit UAL Upper allowance limit T Transportation time, a random variable R Transportation reliability considering limits on both sides R 0 Transportation reliability ignoring early mission completion before LAL T þ d Delay time T  d Advanced time prob Probability r x Shape parameter of Lognormal distribution l x Scale parameter of Lognormal distribution d Location parameter of Lognormal distribution 1 Introduction The performance analysis of each and every transportation mode and system has been a challenge to research com- munity primarily due to several independent and dependent factors influencing the entire transportation network that are unpredictable in realistic scenario. Performance mea- sures appraisal related to safety and reliability, especially in maritime environment, has been gaining momentum recently. Safety and reliability issues of all transportation systems are rather complex and diverse matters of concern. Moreover, infrastructure, quality of service, competitive- ness, cost effectiveness and optimization of transportation & Rajesh S. Prabhu Gaonkar rpg@iitgoa.ac.in V. Mariappan ambikamari@gmail.com 1 School of Mechanical Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Goa (IIT Goa), Farmagudi, Ponda, Goa 403401, India 2 Agnel Institute of Technology and Design, Agnel Technical Education Complex, Assagao, Bardez, Goa 403507, India 123 Int J Syst Assur Eng Manag https://doi.org/10.1007/s13198-020-00996-7