Ocean cargo recession buster?

Two senior scholars in operations and supply chain management are calling on shippers to significantly expand their use of day-definite ocean container services to counter the effects of recession on global trade.
In a report released by the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis, Dr. Panos Kouvelis and Dr. Jian Li declared that shipping full-container loads with specific delivery dates is the logical next step in ocean service.
Their findings were included in the research paper “Managing the New Uncertainty,” published by the business school’s Boeing Center for Technology, Information and Manufacturing (BCTIM).  
Day-definite service refers to the recently developed practice of delivering ocean cargo on a specific date agreed to by a shipper and carrier.  Until now, the service has been aimed at less-than-container load cargo (LCL), that is, shipments that don’t fill an ocean container and are transported with other shipments in the same container. But given the pressure a global recession is placing on supply chain managers to operate more efficiently, Kouvelis and Li say the time has come for widespread use of day-definite delivery for full-container loads (FCL).
The research project was sponsored by APL Logistics.