A Proposed Approach for Selecting Third Party Logistic Alternatives

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 a Industrial Engineering Department, Zagazig University, Zagazig 44519, Sharkia, Egypt b Mechanical Engineering Department, The British University in Egypt, Shorouk City 11837, Cairo, Egypt

2 Industrial Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Zagazig University 44519, Sharkia, Egypt

3 Industrial engineering department, Faculty of Engineering, Zagazig University, Zagazig

Abstract

At present, the demand for a third-party logistics service provider has become an increasingly important issue for companies to improve customer service and reduce logistics costs. Third-party logistics is using another company to perform some tasks. There are many ways to select a third-party logistic provider, like Multi- criteria decision making, statistical approaches, mathematical programming, artificial intelligence, and hybrid method (or integrated method). This paper presents an ambiguous integrated approach for assessing and selecting third-party logistics service providers. This method consists of two phases, in phase one, Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (FAHP) is used to determine the weights of the evaluation criteria. In phase two, Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) is used to evaluate alternatives, sequence them, and make the final selection. The objective is to minimize the effects of inaccuracies such as human judgment and preferences while searching for the best decision. Two methods are used to find the fuzzy set: extent analysis method and the geometric mean technique. In this paper, a survey was conducted on papers from 2014 to 2018 to find the most frequently used criteria, seven criteria were identified: reputation, information technology implementation, information sharing, service cost, reliability, quality, and geographic location.

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