Population frame

As indicated earlier, this study conducts a survey to obtain statistical and practical efficiency. Thus, it is important to select the population which enables generalisability of the findings. A random selection determined by framing the population should enable this study to generalise its findings on ship maintenance management (Cooper & Schindler 2011). As stated previously, a general framing was applied to determine that only shipping companies that operate the ships would be included. However, it is almost impossible to conduct a random selection of the shipping companies due to the unknown actual population and various types of ships and shipping operations involved around the world (see Álvarez 2009; Kjeldsen 2011; Koufopoulos, Lagoudis & Pastra 2005). With

regard to the topic of this thesis, the population generation for this study is approached from the supply chain management literature.

There has been a plethora of research on supply chain management since it was introduced by Keith Oliver in 1982 (see Soni & Kodali 2012). However, most of the research on supply chain management is conducted based on industries from developed countries such as the UK, USA, Australia, Sweden, Turkey, Canada and the Netherlands (Soni & Kodali 2012, 2013). Infrastructure and logistics for managing a supply chain that are available in developed countries may not be applicable in countries that are developing (see Lipsey & Sjöholm 2011; Prasad & Tata 2010; Prater, Swafford & Yellepeddi 2009). These differences could influence the implementation of a supply chain management approach since infrastructure and logistics could affect the performance of a supply chain (Khavul, Prater & Swafford 2012; Prasad & Tata 2010).

Some examples of the differences found in the literature are provided as follows. Devlin and Yee (2005) found inefficient transportation services in developing countries leads to long shipping times and incurs substantial cost on price of product, and Oke, Maltz and Christiansen (2009) suggest that reliability to deliver materials and services is the key factor when selecting suppliers from developing countries. Another example is the study of supply chain management in developing countries by Sohrabpour, Hellström and Jahre (2012). They found that in developing countries different packaging was required due to temperature and humidity of the environment, and this impacted on the management of the

supply chain. Accordingly, it is important to conduct empirical research based on data collected from developing countries.

In relation to the topic of this thesis, data should be collected from a developing country with a shipping industry that accommodates the research into ship maintenance management. Among the developing countries of the world, Indonesia presents an interesting profile for conducting research on supply chain management of ship maintenance. This country has a pivotal role in the South East Asian region which may influence the global economy (Laksmana 2011), which makes Indonesia an important partner in the emerging global production network. This position in turn increases the need for an available and reliable inter-island transportation system, which is the domestic shipping industry. In terms of fleet age, most of the shipping companies in Indonesia operate aging ships (Faturachman & Mustafa 2012a; Sudarsono 2012), which require strategic management in undertaking maintenance to sustain service availability (Bitros & Kavussanos 2005; Grama & Patache 2011). This potential to influence the global production network, as well as the inherent complexity of ship maintenance management as a result of aging ships and lack of logistics support, make Indonesia’s shipping industry an essential focus for research.

Indonesia is the world’s largest archipelagic nation with the most spatially diverse resource endowments and economic activity (Hermana & Silfianti 2011; Hill, Resosudarmo & Vidyattama 2008). This diversity causes significant reliance on inter-island shipping services, with the volume of domestic sea-freight cargo traffic and inter-island passenger traffic contributing about forty to fifty per cent

of its national GDP (Espada, Kumazawa & Tambunan 2005). As a nation with significant reliance on maritime transportation, the Indonesian shipping industry should have adequate maintenance systems in order to underpin safe maritime operations. However, some maritime accidents in Indonesia, for example, the fire accidents on board the Kirana Motor Ship (Wadrianto 2011) and the Teratai Prima Motor Ship (Faturachman & Mustafa 2012a), the explosion on-board Indra Sakti Adyaksa Motor Ship (Sucipto 2011) and Sumber Mutiara IX Motor Tanker (Buol 2014) may reveal a different case. Undertaking this research should provide valuable insights into the complexity of ship maintenance management in a developing country such as Indonesia.

Although Faturachman and Mustafa (2012b) and Artana et al. (2012) mention that a poor maintenance system contributes to the causative factors of ship accidents in the Indonesian shipping companies, there is no further discussion of why the maintenance system in the Indonesian shipping companies becomes a poor system. Thus, acknowledging the notion of poor maintenance system in the shipping companies in Indonesia (Artana et al. 2012; Faturachman & Mustafa 2012b), this research was developed for collecting data from the participants without asking for any suggestion for improving their maintenance performance. Nevertheless, the collected data enables this research to gain valuable insights from the shipping companies, which explain some correlations to their capacity to adopt supply chain management for their ship maintenance. The insights might also be valuable for shipping industry, professionals and scholars to understand the importance and the complexity of supply chain management for managing

ship maintenance in developing country such as Indonesia. Furthermore, the insights might also enable them to identify necessary actions to overcome the emerging challenges in implementing supply chain management.