Logistics activities are performed in order to balance the operational chains of firms. The selection of the Third Party Logistics (3PL) is a challenging task for each organization, which involves various factors and attributes. The presented methodology acts as a boon and aids the decision makers for effectively choosing the appropriate Third Party Logistics (3PL) network. In the revealed work, the authors explored fuzzy sets theory and presented a fuzzy AHP model to facilitate the managers of organizations to deal with the Third Party Logistics (3PL) decision making problems. The overall performance of defined Third Party Logistics (3PL) Service Providers are greatly influenced by many significant parameters: quality, reliability, service assurance, shipment cost, customer relationship, etc. The authors have considered various significant parameters: service level, financial security capabilities, location, global presence, relationship management, and client fulfillment representing first level indices. These parameters have chain of various sub-parameters, represented as second level indices, whose importance is affecting the judgment of the decision makers. Various researches have constraint their work up to first level indices and have not considered the second level indices, which is a crucial part of today's practical decision making process. The authors have considered this issue as research gap and transformed this research gap into research agenda. The authors applied an AHP (Analytical Hierarchy Process) accompanied with fuzzy set theory in order to solve industrial Logistics problems. The objective of chapter is to propose a fuzzy based AHP method towards solve benchmarking (preference orders of defined alternatives under criteria) problems. The presented method facilitates the managers of firms to make the verdict towards choosing the best Third Party Logistics (3PL) service provider. A numerical illustration is provided to validate the method application upon module.
Research on Strategy of the Third Party Logistics Enterprises Customer Relationship Management in China
